Journey of the Impossible Wolf
by SabrinaMagnus
Summary: Bad Wolf created herself to save the Doctor but in the process found an Impossible Girl already doing that from within his own timestream. With the help of the TARDIS, the power of the Time Vortex, and the compassion of one Rose Tyler, Bad Wolf set to work in reuniting the scattered pieces of this Impossible Girl, finding much more than she expected along the way. Rated for Safety.
1. Chapter 1: Bad Wolf

**DISCLAIMER:** I make no money from this, I hold no rights over anything from the Doctor Who universe. I don't own the toys, I just like the play with them.

 **A/N:** This is a rewrite of my first story, Impossible Wolf. That one got away from me, this one aims to be more focused on the two main characters. This story is intended for fans of the show that have a good understanding of Series 1-9. I am not doing a complete rewrite of the show, but am rewriting some key elements, such as Rose not being in love with the Doctor, Jackie not being involved with the events of the Stolen Earth, and the ending of Torchwood Series 3 (series 4 never happens.) Also, this story does NOT crossover with other fandoms outside of the Whoniverse like Stargate, however, the "Ancients" mentioned in this story are somewhat inspired by the Ancients from Stargate.

 **A/N2:** I am sorry that I still cannot promise anything like a regular update schedule. It may sometimes seem like I update frequently, but that's when I have bursts of writing to escape the hell my life sometimes feels like. Also, I don't currently have a beta, so please forgive any spelling/grammar errors.

 **A/N3:** I am so sorry about the first post of this chapter, I had no idea that the formatting screwed up that badly on it. I'm trying it again and will continue to check it more regularly to ensure that doesn't happen again.

 **.oOo.**

 **Journey of the Impossible Wolf**

 ** _Chapter 1: The Bad Wolf_**

Rose stared in amazement after the panel on the console finally opened. The light within was beautiful and warm, and it felt like it was singing a soothing melody to her. As the light streamed out of the console and into her soul through the window of her eyes, she felt a horrible pain, but almost as quickly, it vanished.

" _Do not worry, my Wolf,_ " she heard a soft voice sing within her mind. " _I will ensure that no harm comes to you from our merging._ "

"Are you the TARDIS?" Rose asked as the doors shut by themselves and the time rotor began moving, signaling their departure.

" _That might be the best way to think of me,_ " the voice responded.

"Can you take me to save the Doctor?" Rose asked in a hopeful voice. She never thought she would be able to converse with the TARDIS so plainly. The voice was so soft and melodic, it felt comforting.

" _We will save my thief,_ " the TARDIS replied. " _But as of this moment, we are one being across two vessels. Time has no meaning for us. We are no longer 'us' but rather I. I am the Bad Wolf._ "

The Rose part of her gasped in recognition of that phrase. Bad Wolf was a phrase that seemed to follow her since she met the Doctor. And now, as her mind merged with that of the TARDIS, she understood why. She felt all the memories of the TARDIS and saw the streams of time flow passed her mind's eye. It was an incredible feeling to be a part of the Time Vortex, but it was also sad. She could see so much and wanted to make a difference. As Bad Wolf studied the flow of time, however, she saw the best way to help and to make a difference, was just as she wanted, to help the Doctor.

"There is so much," a new voice said. It was the physical combination of the voice of the TARDIS and the voice of Rose, making a dual-toned ethereal voice with a musical quality to it. It was the voice of Bad Wolf. "I created myself to save the Doctor, but I see now there is so much more than just one encounter that I need to save him from."

As Rose and the TARDIS continued to merge and become the Bad Wolf, realization struck. "I am the Bad Wolf, but I am also more than just one being. I was wrong before, I am not just I, but I am us, we are I and I am we."

"And it is time we got to work," said multiple identical ethereal voices from within the golden glow that now filled the TARDIS.

 **.oOo.**

Bad Wolf walked through time, examining all she could, until she came upon The Moment, sitting in an old barn being tinkered with by the Doctor. She followed the timeline of the device back to its creation and was both inspired and horrified.

Deciding that The Moment must never come to pass, she did the only thing she could do, she stepped through the veil of time and into reality just as the Doctor opened the door of the barn.

"Hello? Is somebody there?" the Doctor asked as he looked out of the doorway.

"It's nothing," Bad Wolf said as she sat down on the device she just deactivated with a touch, causing the Doctor to spin around in surprise. "It's just a wolf," she told him.

 **.oOo.**

Another part of Bad Wolf wandered within the time vortex looking for anything else that could be done to help the Doctor or to help herself in her mission to help him.

She saw his upcoming regeneration, the blood control during the invasion at Christmas. She saw the Beast and the Cybermen and the Daleks. She saw the Rose part of herself get trapped in another universe, as well as everything that had caused it.

She saw Shakespeare and the Carionites as well as the similarities between their power and that of the Ancients of Gallifrey, and how they had all come from the first Ancients to walk the stars.

She saw the family of blood, the year that never was, the Master, Donna Nobel, the reality bomb and the end of time. Bad Wolf studied it all very closely, taking careful note of all that which could be changed, and all that which must not be. She learned so much and still had so much more to discover, that she splintered off another part of herself specifically to aid the Doctor in whatever way she could.

 **.oOo.**

Yet another part of Bad Wolf was scouring through the time vortex specifically for instances where the Doctor needed saving for one reason or another. It came as quite a surprise to her when she found someone else doing exactly that from within the Doctor's time stream itself.

Deciding to investigate further, Bad Wolf jumped into the times tream directly from within the vortex, and found only chaos, with a young woman attempting to make sense of and repair the chaos.

She scanned up and down the timestream until she knew exactly how this young woman came to be within it, and the Rose part of her wept for Clara Oswald. That this brilliant and amazing young woman would sacrifice herself to save the Doctor not only from a sinister threat, but also from himself, touched her so deeply, that she had to do anything she could to help this impossible girl.

Bad Wolf began to glow with vibrant golden energy, calling upon whatever power she could access to help her. She then called upon ancient knowledge she learned of from another part of herself, and the golden energy around her began to swirl with a bright purple energy as well.

When it was done, Bad Wolf stood within a small pocket dimension created within the Doctor's time stream. It wasn't a real place, and it wouldn't last as it was a creation of abstract thought, but it would suffice.

With a deep breath, she raised her arms up, pointing her palms up into the blackness, and millions of tiny gold and purple orbs of energy shot out from her hands and to various points within the time stream.

One of these orbs appeared within the shell of a Dalek, and absorbed into its mind, appearing within a psychological space, similar to the abstract she created moments ago, and took the form of Bad Wolf, appearing before a screen that showed the Doctor running from a room.

"Who are you?" a slightly panicked voice said from behind her, causing Bad Wolf to spin around suddenly. "How did you get in here?" asked the brunette form of the young woman she was here for.

Bad Wolf smiled softly at her. "Hello, Oswin. I'm here to take you home."

 **.oOo.**

After an eternity of instants that felt like forever, Clara opened her eyes to see a blonde girl smiling down at her. That she had glowing golden eyes frightened her and caused her to shoot to her feet in shock and back away.

The blonde girl looked hurt by this, but tried to hide it, so Clara decided to speak. "Where am I?"

Bad Wolf didn't know why Clara's startled reaction stung her so, but she tried to push it aside, and noticed the red glow from Clara's eyes begin to fade. Closing her own eyes to fade her own glow, Bad Wolf brought the Rose part of her to the surface.

"It's okay, Clara," Rose began. "You are still within the Doctor's time stream. I created this place to put the pieces of you back together. The process it not complete, though. You might say you're still cooking. It will take a long time to complete your healing and transformation, but since time has no meaning here, we have plenty of it."

"Hang on, wait. What? What?!" Clara said as she tried to absorb what she was just told. Before she could say any more, however, several little balls of golden light shot at her from the darkness and absorbed into her skin, causing her to gasp as new memories came to her mind.

"I know it must be rather confusing for you right now," Rose started. "But I promise, you are safe here."

Clara's eyes suddenly went wide as saucers as recognition settled in her mind. "Rose?!"

This time it was Rose's turn to look shocked. "The Doctor told you about me?"

"What Doctor?" Clara asked, before deciding it didn't matter at the moment. "No. You're a few years older than I am. You used to chase the mean girls away from the park when I was little. You even got my book back from them when they took it from me."

Rose smiled at the memory. "I had no idea that was you."

"I always admired you for the way you stood up to them," Clara said with a faint pink coloring creeping into her cheeks. Before any more could be said, several more balls of light shot at her, causing her to gasp again. "I remember the Doctor! And jumping into his time stream!"

Rose nodded at her. "As I said, it will take a while for this to complete, but you will get all your memories back, and then some." With a wave of her hand, a sofa appeared and Rose sat down at one end of it, leaving plenty of space for Clara. "Might as well make ourselves comfortable."

 **.oOo.**

Many lifetimes later found Clara unconscious on the sofa with her head in Rose's lap as Rose ran her fingers gently through the distraught girl's hair while softly humming a soothing tune. It broke her heart to see Clara break down as she had, and to see the dried tear streaks across her pretty face, but she knew not all of the memories or lives being restored would be pleasant ones.

As Clara began to stir, Rose continued gently stroking her hair and humming softly, trying to instill a sense of peace and safety.

"How could I have not known I'd become a Dalek?" Clara asked with a hint of misery in her voice.

"Because you weren't," Rose responded simply, still in a soft voice.

Clara shot up and sprang away from Rose. "I'm a MONSTER!" she cried hysterically while looking around frantically for a way out.

Rose jumped up just a quickly and pulled the terrified girl into a tight hug, easing her back to the sofa and laying her back down with her head in her lap once again. "Shh shh shh," Rose said soothingly as she resumed stroking Clara's head calmly, not showing any sign of how much it was eating her up inside to see someone so precious in such a state. "You are NOT a monster. You are an amazing girl with a beautiful soul and THAT is why you didn't realize what had happened. They changed your form, Clara, but they couldn't change who you are."

"How can you stand to touch me," Clara cried, "to even be near me?"

"That's easy," Rose said. "The Dalek wasn't you. The Dalek was the prison in which you were kept for a time is all."

Clara turned her head to look up and saw nothing but compassion, acceptance, and unshed tears in Rose's eyes. "You… you really believe that, don't you?"

"KNOW," Rose stated emphatically. "I don't believe it, I KNOW it."

Clara snaked her arms around Rose's waist and held on to her like a lifeline as she cried. In response, Rose pulled her feet up and stretched out on the sofa, next to Clara, holding her tightly to her, and just letting her cry on her shoulder to get it all out. As Clara finally fell into a deep, restful sleep, Rose waved her hand causing a comfortable blanket to appear and settle over them, before setting her own head on the throw pillow and drifting off to sleep herself.

 **.oOo.**

When Rose woke sometime later, she was quite surprised to find things rather reversed, as Clara was the one holding her and humming soothing tunes while stroking her hair.

"Clara?" Rose asked with not a small amount of confusion.

"It's okay, Rose," Clara said. "I'm here. It's not like I'm going anywhere."

"Well, er, that's good I suppose… but what's going on?"

"You don't remember?" Clara asked with some surprise.

"Remember what?" Rose asked with even more confusion.

"It sounded like you were having a nightmare," Clara said with some concern. "You were crying and calling my name and then shouting, 'Take me back' at someone."

"Huh," Rose said unhelpfully.

"You really don't remember?" Clara asked with a hint of something undefinable in her voice. She was worried about the friend she was growing so close to, but there was something else as well.

"Sorry," Rose said with genuine regret, but also enjoying the warmth of someone holding her and wanting to comfort her.

"Well," Clara began, "nothing to be done for it now, I suppose."

"Maybe not," Rose said. "But this is nice," she continued as she squeezed a little hug around Clara from their near cuddled situation on the sofa.

Clara giggled musically and scooted closer so that they could hold and take comfort from each other. They both fell into a light, peaceful doze for some time before waking fully to start anew on putting Clara back together.

 **.oOo.**

With each glowing shard of her soul that Clara absorbed, she remembered more and began to feel closer to complete. The flow of her soul fragments began to slow, however. That meant that she was almost fully put back together. Yet she didn't feel anywhere close to complete. It was as if something else was missing, far bigger than fragments of her soul that she had been absorbing.

It had been a while now, and it seemed as if the flow of fragments had stopped, so she was surprised when another came flying at her at high speed and flew into her, directly between her breasts. She gasped as a vivid memory flooded her mind, and tears sprang to her eyes, but so did a smile.

"What is it?" Rose asked, curious what could bring both tears and a smile to her friend's face at the same time.

"I remember the rest of the day at the park," Clara told her.

"Oh?" Rose asked. She remembered getting a book back for her from some bullies, but her own memories that far back were a little fuzzy, especially with her own self being rather split and with the time vortex still running through her.

"I wish I could show it to you," the brunette said in a soft voice.

"You can," Rose said. "I'll demonstrate by giving you a memory of how to do this." She then lifted her hand, palm up, and formed a marble-sized ball of brilliant golden energy. Clara stared at the ball of energy in awe that her friend could do that. Rose then raised her hand to the side of Clara's face, and gently pressed the little ball of energy into her temple, causing Clara's eyes to go wide as the memory and knowledge unfolded in her mind.

Rather than verbally respond, Clara lifted her own palm as Rose removed her hand from her temple, and began to form a little ball of energy of her own. When she was finished concentrating, Clara had a bright red marble of energy in her hand, and she pressed it to her friend's temple to give her a copy of the memory.

 **.oOo.**

Rose was back in the park near the estate enjoying a lovely spring day after school on the swings. Her eyes were closed so she could have her face turned up to the warmth of the sun. They snapped open a minute later however when she heard a girl trying hard not to cry as she demanded someone give her back a book.

Looking around, she saw a girl a few years younger than herself standing next to a tree with three other girls, maybe a year or two older surrounding her, tossing a book back and forth between themselves.

"Give me back my book!" the younger girl yelled at them, causing them to laugh at her.

"Aww. Does the little dweeb want her book back?" one of the girls said, causing the other two with her to laugh harder.

"Maybe we should go throw it in the river," one of the other girls suggested.

Rose had heard enough. She might only be a few years older than them, but at her age, a few years was enough for her to be significantly bigger than them. She hopped off the swing and quietly walked up behind the taunting girls where the middle one was holding the book up over her head out of the other girl's reach. Now that she was closer, she recognized one of the girls as a bully wannabe.

Rose reached out and carefully snatched the book from the middle girl's hand, causing her to whip around in surprise and her two cronies to follow suit a moment later.

"Hey," the middle girl said in surprise. "Give that back!"

"Oh," Rose countered. "Not fun when someone else takes something from you, is it?"

"What would you know about it, tramp?" the middle girl said.

SMACK!

The middle girl recoiled from where Rose had slapped her across the face.

"Didn't you ever learn not to be cruel to other people? Someday, they might have a chance to be cruel to you ya' know." Rose started. "Now get out of here before I tell your mum that you were bullying a girl younger than you."

The three girls ran out of there as fast as they could, none of them having been struck before and the one girl not wanting a repeat of it.

When Rose turned back to the younger girl, she saw her staring at her with her jaw hanging open and a look of awe on her face. "I think this is yours," Rose said as she handed the book to her. The young girl took it and stuffed it in her backpack.

"Thank you," she said to Rose in a small voice. "Won't you get in trouble for slapping her though?"

"I don't care," Rose replied honestly. "It was the right thing to do. They were being mean to you. Maybe now they won't be so mean."

The girl continued to stare at her in awe before Rose grabbed her hand, sending a pleasant shiver through her. "Come on," Rose said as she started dragging the girl towards the swings. "Forget about them, let's just have some fun."

As the memory faded, neither of them noticed the blue Police Box in the corner of the park and Clara's face came back into view. Rose smiled at her, holding out her hand to shake. "It's a pleasure to properly meet you, Clara Oswald."

Clara smiled back at her while shaking her hand. "Likewise, Rose Tyler."

 **.oOo.**

It seemed like years passed by until the last soul fragment shot out of the darkness and absorbed into Clara. Her eyes glassed over for a moment, before she focused and saw Rose looking sad.

"What's wrong?" she asked Rose.

"That was the last soul piece," Rose replied with the sadness evident in her voice. She had grown quite close to Clara and would be sorry to be parted from her. She wished they could stay there forever, but knew that the timelines needed to be maintained.

"But… I still feel like something's missing," Clara told her with a bit of sadness in her own voice.

"That is likely just your trying to adjust to being stitched back together, so to speak," Rose responded. "Or it might also be the unfamiliarity of the extra bits that got added in."

"Extra bits?" Clara asked, her voice changing instantly to alarmed.

"Well," Rose began, "you did throw yourself into the winds of time to save the Doctor. You didn't really think you'd survive that, did you?"

"If I didn't survive, then what was all this for?" Clara asked as she began to break down thinking she was about to die.

Rose scooped her up and held her in a tight hug. "Clara, it's okay, I promise. That just came out wrong," she told her. "In order for you to survive all this, you needed to be changed a little, augmented in a way."

Clara took a deep breath to calm herself and took comfort from the scent of vanilla and berries that Rose's hair smelled of as she returned the hug. "Okay," she said as she stepped out of the hug a moment later. "What sort of changes?"

"You're still mostly human," Rose said. "But you're also part Ancient now."

"They were kind of like Time Lords you said, right?" Clara asked as she placed a hand on her chest and felt only one heart.

"Sort of," Rose confirmed. "They were telepathic but in a different way than Time Lords, and also empathic. They also had a different type of regeneration."

Clara's eyes went really wide at that and Rose nodded.

"Yes," Rose said, "You can regenerate. But you will be able to choose whatever form you want to regenerate into. So, if you want to keep this form, you can. And the only thing that can prevent you from regenerating, is your conscious desire not to. So, if you get to be so old that you don't want to keep going for whatever reason, you can just choose not to regenerate."

"What am I supposed to say to something like that?" Clara asked after a moment of her mouth gaping open and closed like a fish.

Rose laughed musically, but with a slight hint of sadness as she spoke. "You don't have to say anything," she told Clara as she stepped away and began to glow bright gold.

"What's happening?" Clara asked, as she herself started to glow with a red energy.

"Our time here is up," Rose said in a dual-toned voice as she remerged to fully become Bad Wolf again.

"But…" was all Clara could say. She didn't know what else to say really.

"This is not the end of the Bad Wolf," she said, again in that musical, dual-toned voice. "We will see you again, my Impossible Girl."

And with that, Bad Wolf vanished, as well as the red glow from around Clara and the sofa they had been relaxing on, causing Clara to flop unceremoniously onto the floor. She could tell that the abstract space they had been in was rapidly starting to decay, and for some reason, her memory was starting to become hazy.

"No! No, no, no, no, NO! I am NOT losing this. I REFUSE to forget this!" she shouted as she closed her eyes tight and kept the image of Rose in her mind's eye. She had grown so close to her and so fond of her and her immense capacity for compassion. Rose was so dear to her, she would rather let the abstract collapse around her than forget Rose. It took all of her willpower, but she kept the image of Rose and the memory of their meeting at the park, in the front of her mind.

She actually thought the abstract might collapse around her, until she heard a voice she didn't think she had heard in many thousands of years, or instants.

"Clara," the Doctor's voice called out to her calmly. "You can hear me, I know you can."

And Clara smiled. The Doctor was coming to rescue her, and she should still remember her park meeting with a sweet, beautiful blonde girl named Rose.

 **.oOo.**

Bad Wolf appeared in the aftermath of Canary Warf. This place made her sick. It could have been a great leap for humanity, but instead, it was controlled by greed for power. But, she had a job to do, and wasted no more energy thinking about what could have been.

She blinked and was on the top floor, running her hands over the smooth surface of a large white wall, ensuring the breach was fully and properly sealed. There would be no Daleks or Cybermen escaping the void through here ever again.

She blinked again and this time was on the ground level of the building, in the formerly secured vault room. She glared daggers at the Sphere that dominated the back of the room. She placed her hand on it and was surprised to feel a panicked presence. She pushed a little of her power into it and it seemed to fade from view.

The golden figure looked around the now empty room, satisfied. She still had much work to do, however. So, in the blink of an eye, she, and much of the technology within the building, disappeared.

 **.oOo.**

Jack Harkness was faced with an impossible decision. In order to send the delta wave that would destroy the 456 near to Earth, they would have to transmit the signal through a child, and the only one close by was his grandson.

He didn't want to think about that, but what other choice was there? Sacrifice one child, or millions? He was wishing he could just die right then and there rather than think about sacrificing his own grandson, and his estranged daughter yelling "Dad, tell them no!" was destroying him inside as well.

He was about to do the unthinkable when he heard a sound from within his mind. A sound he never thought he'd hear again after the Earth was stolen. Jack looked around frantically for the source of the sound, that beautiful wheezing, groaning sound, but realized no one else could hear it. It was broadcasting to him telepathically.

"NO!" He shouted. He would not sacrifice his grandson, not with that sound of hope filling his mind. And it was at that exact moment that all the equipment flared, everything on maximum power, the large room was suddenly filled with a near blindingly bright light.

After their eyes adjusted, Jack looked at the transmission pad and saw a human shaped figure standing there with its back to them, seemingly made of golden light. The figure's face and arms were stretched upwards, and the light of the figure pulsed in time with the signal.

After a few moments, all of the transmission equipment exploded around them, including the computers that were meant to control the signal yet had never activated. Jack, however, never took his eyes off the figure standing on the transmission pad. Something looked terribly familiar about the figure. But as the figure's arms lowered, and the glow began to fade, the outline began to look clearer, more recognizable, and then in the blink of his eyes, the figure was gone.

His daughter threw her arms around him, thanking him for saving her son, but all Jack could do was stare in shock at the now empty transmission platform. For the briefest instant, he could have sworn he saw Rose, the girl he thought of as a little sister. But that wasn't possible, she was in another universe with the Doctor's clone.

Then, the magnitude of what he'd almost done to his grandson slammed into him like a high-speed lorry. He detangled his daughter's arms from around himself and ran, as fast as he could, all the way out of the building, stopping only for a moment to puke his guts out in the grass, before running even further, trying to run from what he'd almost done.

 **.oOo.**

Bad Wolf stood in front of the Doctor as the last pieces of herself came together, and all the experiences of the individual parts became shared with each other. The pieces of herself that she sent out on various tasks had done so much good, but had also witnessed so much sorrow.

"I can see everything," she said as she made changes to the Rose part of herself to ensure she lived after the power sustaining her was gone. The change hurt, having to be parted from Clara hurt, knowing that she was out of time when she had so much more she wanted to do hurt. Tears streamed down her face as the Doctor looked up at her in shock at what she had said.

"All that is," she continued as his eyes widened in realization of what she was describing. "All that was… All that ever could be."

The Doctor stared at her in amazement. This pink and yellow human with the power of a TARDIS and the Time Vortex coursing through her, was describing exactly how he saw the threads of time around him.

He stood up and looked her in the eyes, imploring her with his gaze to let him remove the power from her. "That's what I see," he told her, trying to convince her to give up the power. "All the time. Doesn't it drive you mad?"

"My head," she responded in a pained voice, silently agreeing to let him take the power from her, while at the same time storing a tiny sliver of it away within the Rose part of herself.

"Come here," he told her, understanding what she was unable to say.

"It's killin' me," she cried. And it was. She did too much and was worn out, no longer having the energy to release the power on her own. Rose was ready to die, happy in the knowledge that she had saved the Doctor and Clara, but Bad Wolf was not going to let that happen.

"I think you need a Doctor," he said, trying and failing to inject some levity into the situation.

Bad Wolf could see that he had an idea though and forced herself to take a step forward. The Doctor crossed the rest of the distance and held her close, before leaning down and kissing her lightly for just a moment, enough time to use the contact to seize the power and draw it out of his companion.

Rose felt the power slipping away, but also felt the sliver left behind. Then she felt something she hadn't expected, a fog settling in over her recent memories. Inside she seethed and raged against the fog, fighting against it and starting to push it away. Then she felt the presence of the remnant of power within her whisper quietly to her mind.

" _It's ok, I expected this. You need to let this happen for the timelines to remain safe. Your memories will be restored to you when you need them._ "

Rose, however, was exhausted, and couldn't fight it anymore even if she wanted. She did as Bad Wolf suggested, and let the fog settle over her memories, and her body finally gave out, collapsing into the Doctor's arms as everything went black.

 **.oOo.**


	2. Chapter 2: Memories

**Disclaimer:** See chapter 1 for disclaimer.

 ** _Chapter 2: Memories_**

Clara cracked one eye open and looked blearily around the room. She was in her bedroom on the TARDIS but couldn't remember how she got there. She decided to get cleaned up and go find the Doctor and figure out what happened.

After she had showered and changed, she was standing in front of the mirror brushing her hair when she noticed something strange. She stepped closer to the mirror and saw what it was that was out of place. There was a faint red glow in her eyes, fading rapidly.

Clara gasped as a memory flashed through her mind of a chance meeting in the park when she was a little girl. Hastily finishing with her hair, she ran from her room, down the halls, and to the console room in search of the Doctor.

She was surprised to find the console room empty, however. "Damn it, Doctor. Where are you?" she asked to the emptiness of the room. She received quite a surprise when the lights flickered once.

"Does that mean he's still on board?" Clara asked, hoping the TARDIS would cooperate.

When something on the console chirped and sounded happy, she took that as a yes.

"I need to show the Doctor something," Clara said. "I know you and I haven't gotten on well in the past, but is there any way you can help me show it to him? I don't remember the exact date and time."

Another chirp was followed by the lights dimming, except for a single panel on the main console that lit up brightly. Walking over to it, Clara noticed it was covered with some type of gel sacs. Parts of the gel sacs themselves began to dim, leaving a shadowy shape of a hand. Placing her own hand over the shape, Clara asked, "Like this?"

Two chirps answered her, causing her to remove her hand and watch as the shadowy shape morphed to a small space between two of the gel sacs. She flattened her hand and slipped her fingers between the gel sacs as she assumed that was what she was being told to do.

Only a moment later the console room lit up again and the central column began to rise and fall with that most wonderful sound in the universe. Clara laughed and smiled at the console, "Thank you. Thank you so much. I promise I will do everything I can to make this worth it."

She heard some happy chirping coming from the console, followed by rapidly approaching footsteps running towards her.

The Doctor ran through one of the side doors and skidded to a halt in front of the console, pulling a screen in front of his face to look at the readout. "What's gotten into you, eh Dear?"

"That would be me," Clara said with a cheeky smile and a little wave of her free hand.

"What?!" he said, his eyes snapping over to look at her until he noticed her hand in contact with the telepathic interface. "What are you doing?"

"We need to have a long discussion, Doctor," she told him.

"About what?" he asked with a confused pitch to his voice.

"You'll see when we get there," she responded.

"Where are we going?" he asked, trying to keep the confusion out of his voice this time. He was used to the TARDIS taking him places he didn't set course for, but for a companion to do so was unheard of. Before anything else could happen, however, the time rotor stopped and went silent after a quick thud to indicate they had landed.

"Somewhere… peaceful," Clara told him as she stepped away from the console and walked to the door. When she stepped outside, the Doctor had no real choice but to follow.

She led him over to a park bench where she sat down at one end and proceeded to cross one leg over the other while smoothing out her skirt. "Have a seat, Doctor. I need you to tell me a story."

He sat down but didn't speak immediately, instead licking his finger and pointing it up in the air as if checking the wind direction. "Earth, London, early 1990s, a couple of very powerful timelines nearby," he said before looking over at his companion. "Why here? Why now?"

"That little girl, over there by the tree," she replied with a nod in that direction. "That's me when I was a little girl."

The Doctor's eyes nearly bugged out of his head as he turned and saw the form of the little girl he met while researching to find Clara. He whipped his head back around to look at his companion and spoke quietly, but urgently.

"We really shouldn't be here!"

"Calm down, Doctor. This is as close as we're getting."

"We still shouldn't be here," he told her, still with urgency in his voice but also a little curiosity at how she knew she shouldn't get too close to herself.

"We can leave soon enough," she told him. "But first, I need you to watch this so you can tell me about my rescuer."

"What? Rescue?" he asked in quick succession, before turning again and looking as three other girls now surrounded the young Clara. He was half tempted to walk over there and get the book back for her, when he was shocked to see someone else doing just that. His jaw fell open as he stared at the younger version of someone he never thought he'd see again.

"Rose," he said, his voice barely a whisper.

Clara nodded to herself, glad that she had remembered her name correctly, then scooted closer to the Doctor to rest her head on his shoulder. "Tell me about her," she said.

 **.oOo.**

Rose stared in shock at the blank wall in front of her. Her parallel father just saved her from the void, but for some reason, that just left her with a void inside herself. She felt cold and empty, like being wrapped in a frozen wet blanket, as if warmth was something she would never feel again.

"No," she cried out with a gasp. Her hair started flowing around her in a nonexistent wind and her eyes flared bright gold as previously suppressed memories suddenly burst to the front of her mind. "Clara," she said in a whisper as the memories swam through her mind.

She whipped around and snatched one of the dimension hoppers from Pete and slammed her palm against it violently as if the harder she pressed it, the faster it would take her home. But nothing happened. Rose threw the device to the floor and ran towards the blank wall, slamming her fists against it, trying to open the path back to her universe.

"Take me back. Take me back!" she cried out as she pounded on the wall. She had to get back. The Doctor couldn't be on his own and she had to find Clara.

"It stopped workin'" Pete said as he removed the hopper from around his neck. "He did it," he continued in a solemn voice. "He closed the breach."

The memories were still unfolding within Rose's mind though, and she remembered the sliver of power that she had left within herself as Bad Wolf. She reached deep down within herself and grabbed onto that power. As she did, her entire demeanor changed. She stopped crying, her eyes flared an even brighter gold, and a brilliant aura of golden energy sprang up from within her, radiating outward and causing her mother to gasp in shock.

Rose placed her hands flat on the wall and turned her ear to it as well, trying to find any last trace of a crack between the worlds that she could escape through. She found none. And with one last cry of desperation, she collapsed to the floor in a heap, all trace of golden glow fading from her instantly.

Jackie rushed forward to check on her daughter, glad to find that she was still breathing, and called Pete over to help her. She had no idea what had just happened to Rose, but she was going to do everything she could to be there for her daughter.

 **.oOo.**

The Doctor was staring at the space where the hologram had just vanished from. He had just said goodbye to his best friend, the pink and yellow human that had melted his cold shell and helped him to really live again. He was never going to see her again, and it was tearing him up inside.

He was shocked out of his despair, however, by a sudden voice shouting from the other side of the console. "What the hell is that supposed to mean? Tell WHO that Bad Wolf sent me?"

The Doctor spun around on his heels and saw a flash of golden energy disappear, leaving a redhead in a wedding dress. "What?" he asked out of sheer confusion.

The bride spun around and let out a squeak of surprise.

"What?" the Doctor said again, his confusion addled brain being stuck on that word.

"Who are you?" the redhead said, quickly getting over her shock.

"Bu…" he tried to say, his confusion still impeding his speech. That shouldn't be possible, a human being can't just _appear_ in the TARDIS like that.

"Where am I?" the bride said, raising her voice in anger at not having any of her questions answered.

"What?" the Doctor said again, deciding to give up trying to understand it right then and just figure out what to do next.

"What the hell is this place?!" she shouted.

"What?!" he shouted right back. This was going to be a long day.

 **.oOo.**

Rose was not looking forward to this. They had all just helped to save all of the universes across the void, and now she was going to have to break this man's heart. The Doctor had just left, leaving his clone with a chunk of TARDIS to grow one of his own, when she turned back to face the man she was supposed to help, according to the Doctor. But this man didn't need her help, and she knew it.

"Doctor," she started to say to the clone before he interrupted her.

"I know," he said with a slightly sad grin on his face.

"You… what?" Rose asked. She was confused now.

"Part Time Lord, remember? I saw the timeline as I was forming. I know that Bad Wolf… you might say… had a hand in my creation," he said, wriggling the fingers of his formerly chopped off hand.

Rose looked at him in shock for a moment, before bursting into giggles at his horrible joke, which caused him to chuckle a bit as well.

"I'm still sorry, Doctor," she told him.

"It's ok. I think I'll stick around for a while, maybe help out Pete's Torchwood."

Rose smiled sadly at him but nodded in understanding. She even thought it would be a good idea, working as part of a team rather than trying to do everything on his own. She took a step back and began to glow with golden energy.

This time, the Doctor's clone did look surprised. "Bad Wolf," he said in shock. "But I thought I took it out of you. How can Bad Wolf be here?"

"We hid a small portion of the power away," she said in her melodic voice.

"And you've survived for this long with it," he added for her with a nod.

"Goodbye, Doctor"

"Goodbye, Rose Tyler. Go and be fantastic!" he told her with a genuinely happy smile.

And just like that, she was gone, leaving the alternate Doctor staring where she had been, before he smiled to himself and walked down the beach towards the nearest town, whistling a merry tune as he went.

 **.oOo.**

Captain Jack Harkness was sitting at a bar on a starliner that was visiting the solar system. He was sipping his first drink of the night, his first of many he expected. It had been six months since he had almost sacrificed his grandson, but he still felt like shit about it.

Then there was the Doctor. He popped in last night and set him up with someone as his way of saying goodbye. Alanzo was a nice guy, but they were just too different for it to be more than a one-night fling.

Jack had just cut his remaining ties to Earth, saying goodbye to Gwen and her husband, before coming back to the ship and starting his drink. He needed to get as far away as he could. Somewhere deep down, however, he knew nowhere would ever be far enough.

He had just finished his drink and was about to order a second when a frantic beeping from his vortex manipulator caught his attention. Flipping it open and checking the readout, he was surprised to see that someone was in the old travel office that had been the front for Torchwood. What was more surprising was that the perimeter alarm had never been tripped.

The Hub was sealed, he had seen to that months ago, and the travel office had been seen to close down at the same time, so no one should be in there, unless they knew what they were looking for. If they were looking specifically for Torchwood, chances were, they were up to no good at all.

Jack let out a long, drawn out sigh. He never considered that this would even be possible, let alone that he'd feel the need to go back to Earth before he'd even really left it far enough behind. With a groan, he got up from his bar stool, pressed a few buttons on his vortex manipulator, and disappeared in a flash of light.

When he reappeared, he was just outside the door to the travel office. With another press of a button, he heard the door locks disengage and he closed the cover of his manipulator. Pulling his gun from under his coat, he flung the door open and jumped inside.

"Stop right there!" he commanded before his eyes registered a head of blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. His breath caught for a moment, thinking that somehow, Rose was back in their universe. He didn't have long to think about that, however.

In a blur, the figure before him spun around and kicked the gun from his hand, up into the air, where she caught it and pointed it right between his eyes.

"Who are you?" she asked in a no-nonsense tone.

"Captain Jack Harkness," he answered calmly. She hadn't tried to kill him yet, so he might as well see what he could learn.

"Where are we?" she asked, again with a tone of authority, but with the slightest trace of nervousness in her demeanor as well.

That caught Jack off guard a bit. "Cardiff," he replied.

"Less specific," she commanded.

"Earth?" he said in a cheeky manner to diffuse some of the tension. He was surprised however to see her eyes widen visibly at that answer.

"Earth?" she said mostly to herself as if trying to piece something together. "Why would she send me to Earth instead of to Dad, or even Donna or Martha?"

Now it was Jack's turn to look shocked. "You know Martha and Donna?"

"Yes," she said, eyeing him wearily. "I take it you do as well?"

Rather than answer, he asked another question. "Are you a friend of the Doctor?"

"He's my Dad," she replied matter-of-factly.

Jack's eyes bugged out for a moment before they crossed as he looked at the gun pointed between his eyes and then back to her.

"Hey, you pointed it at me first," she said. She then proceeded to flick the revolver open, drop the bullets into her hand, flick it closed again, and handed the gun back to Jack.

He put the gun back in the holster under his coat before speaking up again. "I never knew the Doctor had a daughter. What are you doing here?"

"I don't know," she replied nonchalantly. "Bad Wolf brought me here, did something to my head, and then vanished."

Jack's breathing hitched again. "Did… did you just say, Bad Wolf?"

A fraction of a second later, the dark room suddenly lit up from the light of a swirling vortex of pale, golden energy. The two people in the room raised a hand to shield their eyes, and then just as quickly, the light was gone, leaving only the dim light from outside shining on a third person now standing in the room with them.

"Bad Wolf."

"Rose!"

"Did you miss me?" Rose said cheekily, before collapsing to the floor in a heap.

 **.oOo.**

"Need a moment alone with your painting?" Clara asked the Doctor. She was trying to stay upbeat for him, all three of him really. But now that the other two were gone, her strength was starting to crumble.

The Doctor turned partially towards her. "How did you know?"

"Those big, sad eyes," she said, plastering an understanding smile on her face. She did understand, but she was close to breaking down herself. She just spent the better part of the day with three versions of the Doctor… and a version of Bad Wolf that didn't properly recognize her.

"Ah," the Doctor said softly, turning back to the painting.

Clara walked over to him and kissed him on the cheek as a show of support, but couldn't look him directly in the eyes for fear of him seeing her own need to be alone.

"I always know," she told him. She stepped away and walked back to the TARDIS before turning for a second. "Oh, by the way, there was an old man looking for you. I think it was the curator," she told him, before opening the door and stepping inside, closing it again behind her and collapsing against it.

After taking a few deep breaths, Clara got to her feet and walked towards where she thought her bedroom was at the moment. She was walking for several minutes before she realized she was unconsciously following a string of blinking lights along the floor of the hallways as if leading her somewhere.

When she got to the end of the blinking lights, she found herself in front of an unmarked door that was slightly ajar. Opening it, thinking the TARDIS had moved her bedroom again, she walked inside, closing the door behind her. What she saw, was most certainly not her room, however.

Inside was a large, nearly flat hammock attached to coral textured struts on either side of the room. On the hammock were several large pillows, and a thick, comfortable looking duvet the same color as the TARDIS. Looking around the slightly messy room, it was obvious that this had been Rose's room. That realization caused Clara to sink to the floor, finally giving in to her tears.

"Why!?" Clara cried out at the TARDIS. "Why would you bring me here?"

When she heard the tone of the background humming change, a realization came to her.

"You miss her too, don't you?" Clara asked.

The lights flickered once and she nodded in understanding.

"But why wouldn't she talk to me?" she asked, not really expecting an answer. She had seen Rose, or as she more suspected, Bad Wolf, with the War Doctor. The only acknowledgment she received though, was a finger to the lips indicating that she should keep quiet about seeing someone else with them.

It broke her heart to do so, but she did, even though she kept sneaking glances at her. From her slowly returning memories and the stories the Doctor told her, she knew that Rose was a special person. What she didn't know was why she felt so miserable at not being able to talk to her or even hint at her being there.

All of a sudden, she felt the unique pull of a transmat, and abruptly found herself in the hammock under the duvet. Clara didn't even bother protesting, she just pulled one of the pillows close to her, holding onto it tightly, and proceeded to cry herself to sleep, all the while wondering why she needed to see Rose so badly.

 **.oOo.**

Rose yawned and stretched as she woke up. Something was different though. She was in an unfamiliar bed, she still had an ache within her that she couldn't describe, but the feeling of a blanket of ice being wrapped around her was gone.

Sitting bolt upright in the bed, she looked around to figure out where she was. The room was quite spartan with concrete walls and no decorations to speak of. What did stand out, however, was the metal ladder bolted to the wall that led up to an open hatch. Climbing up the ladder, she found herself in a fairly nice office full of windows looking out over a cavernous room.

"Good morning," Jack said from a doorway behind her, causing her to spin around.

"Jack?" Rose asked, before taking in the long coat, messy hair, and piercing eyes, as well as the device strapped to his wrist. She ran across the room and flung her arms around the man she thought of like a brother.

Jack returned the hug, picking Rose up and spinning her around. "It's good to see you," he told her as he set her down.

"And you," Rose replied as she stepped back to really look at him. "But, how did I get here?"

"I was hoping you might be able to tell me that," Jack replied with confusion in his voice.

Rose proceeded to spend the next half an hour or so telling him everything she knew about Bad Wolf and what she had done, but admitting that parts were still missing from her memories. "Some of my Bad Wolf memories are still a bit fuzzy," she told him as she sat in a chair by his desk. "All I knew is I would be transporting back to my home Earth."

"So, that was part of Bad Wolf then?" he asked her with a look on his face that said he was piecing something together.

"Yeah. Why do you ask?"

"I've seen something else like your arrival before," he told her.

"What? When?" she asked him as she sat straight up in her chair at full attention.

"Come on," Jack said as he walked back over to the door. "I'll show you."

He led her out of his office, through the main section of the Hub and down into the cells where they had kept the weevils and others that came through the rift, all of whom he had turned over to UNIT before sealing the Hub. When he reached the end of the cell hall, he entered what looked to be a broken cell and pressed one of the bricks, causing it to slide into the wall and a hidden door to open.

After a short walk down another, narrower hall, they came into a large open cave containing something that caused Rose to gasp in surprise. "This appeared the same way?"

"Yes, right after the disaster at Canary Warf," he supplied for her.

Rose walked up to the sphere and carefully slid her palm across the smooth surface, feeling the cold metal texture, but also a soothing presence touch her mind. Memories flashed through her mind and she concentrated on one in particular, before stepping back as the sphere began to glow.

"What's going on?" Jack asked.

"You're not going to believe this, Jack. Not even after you see it."

"Believe what?"

As if to answer his question, the sphere seemed to melt into a ball of energy and change shape before their eyes. It pulsed a few times and began to settle into a new shape, that of a very familiar box. But this box wasn't a blue police box. Instead, it looked to be carved out of a dark purple crystal of some kind.

"It's a TARDIS!?" Jack asked in shock. Rose was right, he was having a hard time believing it, and he saw it there right in front of him.

"She's an experimental TARDIS created in the last days of the Time War," Rose said. "She was stolen by the Daleks that stole the prison ship that started the events of Canary Warf."

"And now she's yours?" he asked her in surprise.

"If she'll have me," she replied, before walking over to the crystalline TARDIS, gently pushing the doors open, and stepping inside.

Rose entered the console room and looked around in amazement. She had only really seen the Doctor's TARDIS before, and it was a mess of bits and bobs as if he designed it especially so no one else could understand it. This console room though was a work of art.

It was as if the outer shell first took the shape of a sphere specifically to reflect this room. It was dark colors, mostly black and purple, but with neat and organized panels on the side consoles. The central console was orderly with regular nobs, switches, buttons, dials, levers, and other assorted controls.

In the center of the main console, was a large translucent tube that had unbroken glowing purple rods surrounding a slightly larger central rod that was not actually connected to its counterpart below it.

Around the walls were various light fixtures that gave it a futuristic look, with tracks of light spanning the entire circumference of the room and along the rib-shaped struts that seemed to hold the walls together.

Rimming the upper portion of the room was a dark gray catwalk that led off to various doors, and below was another level with some access for repairs under the main console. All in all, it was absolutely beautiful!

"Oh, you are a beautiful girl, aren't you?" Rose said appreciatively to the TARDIS as it came to life around her.

The background hum in the room changed pitch, sounding happy and causing Rose to smile and Jack to whistle appreciatively.

"That is quite impressive," he said in awe.

"I think she's gorgeous," Rose responded excitedly. She walked all around the room, before making a pass around the center console, stopping when she found something that seemed out of place. Something was slowly raising up from the console.

Looking closer, it resembled her Doctor's sonic. It was a hand held tubular shape, but with a black and purple color scheme, much like this TARDIS. Instead of the short round emitter at the top, there was a small rectangular black cage with four small translucent purple tubes surrounding a slightly larger similarly colored tube in the middle that protruded just slightly from the angular roof-like portion of the cage section. Instead of an end cap on the bottom, it tapered down to slightly smaller black dials with a few purple rings.

Rose picked the device up and was surprised when she felt something inside that she couldn't quite describe. After a moment, she saw something pop up in her vision that looked like a diagram of the device with some explanations of how it worked. She realized after a few seconds of looking at the information, that it was coming from the device itself, projected directly into the visual center of her brain. It had what she was now coming to understand as a neural interface.

"Is that a sonic screwdriver?" Jack asked. He was still in complete awe of what he was seeing all around him, even though he had lived in a TARDIS before.

"Similar concept," Rose began as she placed it into her pocket and disengaged the neural interface. "But I think only the Doctor has a sonic _screwdriver_. I'll just call this a sonic and leave it at that," she concluded with a silly grin.

Jack smiled at her and sat down in a chair built onto the railing next to one of the outer ring of panels. "So, what now?"

Rather than answering, Rose walked around the central console adjusting various controls as their images and adjustments sprang into her mind before pulling the main lever, causing the central rotor to pulse up and down as they began to take off. They were only in flight for a few seconds before they landed and Jack looked at her curiously.

"You didn't really want to try to carry this lovely ship all the way back through those tunnels and halls, did you?" she asked him cheekily.

He laughed at that and walked towards the doors, opening them and stepping out into the Hub, only to be met with the barrel of a gun between his eyes.

"We really need to stop meeting like this," Jack said with a slight chuckle.

"Sorry," Jenny began. "But this box just appeared out of thin air. How was I supposed to react when it suddenly opened up?"

"Jenny?" she heard a voice say from behind Jack. "What are you doing here?"

"I should ask you that," she replied when she got a look at Rose. "You're the one that brought me here."

"Bad Wolf brought you here? Now?" Rose asked.

"Just moments before you appeared in front of us," Jenny responded. Jack had told her about Rose and how she had become Bad Wolf, or at least what the Doctor had told him about it.

"Shite," Rose muttered softly. "This is too soon. Far too soon. I'm not ready to see the Doctor yet! I still have to find her!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa there Rosie," Jack said, using his nickname for her to try to calm her approaching panic. "What do you mean?"

"This is too soon, Jack. I remember taking Jenny from her shuttle that had run out of fuel in the middle of nowhere, but I remember doing it with the intention to bring her to the Doctor, so he could teach her about regeneration and Time Lord lessons and all that," she told him.

"But why is it too soon?" he asked her. "Why would you not be ready to see him yet?"

"You know how he can sometimes be a control freak, Jack," she began. "I can't risk him somehow finding a way to take this TARDIS away from me, not yet at least."

"I don't think he'd do that, Rose."

"I can't risk it, Jack. I still have tasks I need to complete before I can see him. I'm sorry. Please look after Jenny until I can come back," she said. Without so much as a backward glance, Rose bolted into the TARDIS and shut the doors behind her, dematerializing just a moment later.

Rose set the TARDIS to idle in the Time Vortex according to the instructions that the TARDIS was planting into her mind. This was all going to take some getting used to, but thankfully, she had all of time at her disposal now.

"Okay, Dear," Rose started as she looked up at the ceiling of the console room. "I need a quiet place where I can relax and sort out all of this information that Bad Wolf left me. Some of it is still unfolding inside my head."

In response, one of the doors on the upper catwalk opened. Walking over to it, Rose saw a string of lights at the top of the hall, blinking in a forward direction. Following them, she ended up in front of a strange looking metal door. Opening it, she saw a brightly lit, completely stark white room with no furniture at all. As soon as she stepped into the room, however, she began to float, and the light changed from blindingly white, to a soft purple color. Rose took a deep breath, arranged herself into a comfortable position floating in the air, and closed her eyes to concentrate on what little she knew of meditation.

 **.oOo.**


	3. Chapter 3: Impossible You Say?

**Disclaimer:** See chapter 1 for disclaimer.

 ** _Chapter 3: Impossible You Say?_**

The Doctor knew the creature was approaching him but he was still having trouble wrapping his head around the fact that he had been in this place for seven thousand years. Yet, there was no denying it. The stars had changed and there was absolutely no chance he had time traveled in getting there, he would be able to feel that in his very core.

Then it all started to click into place in his mind, as it must have countless times before; the skulls in the sea, the skull attached to the teleporter, he even had a sneaking suspicion about what the message in the ashes meant. He told the creature something about the Hybrid to keep it at bay a little longer, and then ran back to room twelve.

What he found there confirmed all his suspicions, particularly about the story the message 'bird' reminded him of. When he reached the end of the smooth passage behind the door marked twelve, he found a twenty feet thick block of solid azbantium, four-hundred times harder than diamond.

It would likely take him billions of years to be able to break through it with just his hand, but he had to try, no matter what it cost him. But that didn't mean he had to like it. In fact, it made him quite angry with being trapped there for as long as he apparently had been. So angry, that he punched the azbantium out of sheer frustration and rage.

The pain that spiked through his hand and arm, however, was nothing compared to the shock of what was happening before his eyes. The spot that he had hit began to fracture right in front of him, and the cracks shone with a bright, golden light. Slowly, the cracks began to spread out, farther and farther, until they covered the entire visible surface like a spider's web. Soon after, the entire block of azbantium radiated with golden light.

The Doctor heard the whole block shatter. Rather than create a pile of shards, however, the shattered material simply vanished. Staring in shock, he could think of only one place he had seen such a golden energy before, and he smiled faintly.

"Always looking out for me, aren't you?" he said softly to himself.

 **.oOo.**

The zero room was still bathed in soft, purple light, and in the center floated the figure of Rose. Though she was asleep and floating peacefully, her eyes could be seen to be moving rapidly under her lids as streams of gold and purple energy floated around her form.

Her being was changing, the healing energies and granites within the room were completing the changes Bad Wolf had started, at the atomic level. Her mind, however, was constantly reliving everything she had seen and learned while she was Bad Wolf, over and over again in a cycle of information.

While this was mostly unconscious, there was one thread of information that she was able to keep in the front of her mind, the timeline of a most impossible girl. Clara was someone that was so much like herself in her desire to keep the Doctor safe. She, like most of his companions always learned eventually, knew that the Doctor was integral in the continuation of the universe.

There was also a compassion within her that Rose admired. That philosophy of not running out on the people you care about inspired her. That was why Rose was so focused on this particular task. She had grown quite fond of Clara during her time as Bad Wolf and would do anything to ensure her kindness could be shared with the universe at large.

But not all was well within the zero room. Rose's eyes were flickering back and forth wildly beneath her eyelids. To an outside observer, one might think she was having a bad dream. Inside her mind, however, Rose was panicking over not being able to see beyond a certain point in Clara's timeline, as if that thread of time had a knot in it that she could not see beyond.

The calm lighting of the zero room pulsed, cycling rapidly between brilliant gold and angry red, before settling back into the peaceful purple it had been. While this had been going on for several months, the process was far from complete.

 **.oOo.**

"What was that all about?" Jenny asked. "Where did she go?"

"I have no idea," Jack responded as he stared at where the crystal TARDIS had just disappeared from. He was pulled out of his surprised state soon after though by an alarm from his vortex manipulator. Checking it, his eyes nearly popped out of his head in shock and he ran over to start up one of the computers in the Hub.

"What's going on?" Jenny inquired as she heard some alarming sounds coming from the computer Jack was working at.

"I don't know," he responded as he was typing away furiously at some of the controls and instrument panels. "There was just a massive surge of energy from the rift. It's reading like there was just a massive ripple through time."

 **.oOo.**

"He did it," one of the technicians said to the General. "We've just been sealed up in a pocket universe. Instrumentation is getting readings of the Void from beyond the borders."

"Now, we have to hope," the General began, "that he manages to find us."

There was silence within the war room for several moments, until a cloister bell rang out. And then another rang out, and then another and another, until every single one of the cloister bells were ringing, including those on the remaining TARDISes.

"What's happening?" the General asked.

"Sir," another technician started. "We've just registered a level nine ripple!"

"How is that even possible?" the General asked. "We're in the Void, our connection to the time vortex should be dormant."

"It didn't come from the schism," someone else replied.

"WHAT?!" the General shouted. "How could such a powerful ripple of time energy be registered if not directly from the schism? Such a thing shouldn't be possible."

"It impacted on the edges of the pocket universe," the first technician said.

"It originated from the Void itself?" the General asked.

"Uncertain," the technician replied.

"Perhaps," another technician began, "that's why the Eternals called it the Howling?"

 **.oOo.**

Ohila sat in meditation with other members of the Sisterhood of Karn. The Time War had taken a toll on the entire universe and even now the effects of it could still be felt, but the time vortex, at least, had begun to settle. Now, it was time to rest.

That rest, however, would not come just yet. The meditation was interrupted as all the members of the sisterhood cried out in shock and clutched their heads around a terrible howl they felt ripple across time and space and beyond.

"High Priestess," an acolyte cried. "What has happened?"

"My sisters," Ohila began, "it seems that the ancient wolf has visited our universe once again and done the impossible." She paused, trying to grasp the magnitude of what she sensed.

"What has the wolf done?" another acolyte asked.

"The last of the Quantum Shades, formerly contained by the Time Lords, has been _destroyed_ ," she told them.

The news was met with gasps and whispers. "But, how is that possible?" someone asked.

"It would seem that the shade has been denied a soul," she told them.

 **.oOo.**

The Doctor stared in horror as Clara stepped forward to face the raven. He knew what a quantum shade would do to Clara. He also knew that it was thought there was only one left in the universe, supposedly contained on Gallifrey. If that was true, and there were no other quantum shades left in the universe, that meant the Time Lords were involved in what was happening.

He watched as his companion, his friend, held her arms out at her sides, whispering to herself to be brave as she looked at the raven swooping towards her. As the raven was about to impact Clara, the Doctor was startled as several different events assaulted his time senses as the same instant.

The first thing he registered, was a time ripple of great power wash over him from the spontaneous creation of a fixed point in time. The next thing his brain processed was a blur in his field of vision, seemingly lasting less than a nanosecond. The last thing he realized, before he felt everything stop, was a time lock engaging. And then, all of a sudden, time started moving normally again, and he saw Clara fall to the cobblestone of the trap street, dead.

He was furious! All that he sensed in the span of less than a moment, and she was still dead. He was sure of Time Lord involvement now, which meant that Mayor Me was another of their puppets, manipulated into whatever deal she had made.

The Doctor stepped back inside knowing that he was going to have to take the teleport to get the answers he wanted, but he was still furious. And he made sure that Me knew it. He disappeared in a flash of light, and Me was quite surprised to hear the sound of the TARDIS dematerializing soon after, as if following him. She thought it strange because she hadn't thought he'd parked so close, or that the TARDIS even could follow him like that, but she gave it no more thought. Her people were safe now.

It would be some time before she noticed that the tattoo had completely vanished from her upper body.

 **.oOo.**

Deep within the Void TARDIS, floating within the zero room, Rose Tyler's eyes snapped open, burning with a furious golden energy as she floated herself to the door. She had a mission to complete.

 **.oOo.**

Clara stared in shock as she tried to wrap her mind around everything that was happening. She had just been pulled away from her death, she was on Gallifrey with the Doctor, her body was time-looped, he'd just assaulted a General and was now waving a gun around while making jokes about selfies!

"She's been dead for half the lifetime of the universe," the General said to him. "If you try to change that, you could fracture Time itself. Doctor, Lord President, are you really going to take that risk?"

This was getting way out of hand very quickly. She had to do something.

"Doctor," Clara said quietly as she carefully took his hand in her own. "Please, I don't want this," she told him. "Put it down, please."

The Doctor, however, was wracking his brain in overdrive trying to figure out a way to save Clara. He stared at the General and decided to ask a question he really didn't want to.

"Regeneration?"

The General sighed in resignation. "Tenth."

"NO!" Clara shouted as she jumped in front of the Doctor, staring at the gun in his hands with more than a little fear. "This isn't you, Doctor. This isn't who you are or how you fix things."

"Clara," the Doctor said, trying to calm himself. "The Time Lords are responsible for your death. They provided the last quantum shade in existence!"

"It wasn't anyone's fault but my own, Doctor, and you know it."

"But…" the Doctor tried to reason. "I have a duty of care."

"I made a mistake, Doctor. I have to face that."

"That doesn't make this right," he told her as he lowered the gun so it was no longer pointed at his friend.

"But, it does. Don't ask me how. I can't explain it. Some of my memories are still fuzzy," Clara told him, imploring him to understand. "I think this was always meant to happen."

"Clara," the Doctor said to her with pleading in his eyes. "If you go back there, you die. You're human, there's no coming back from what a quantum shade will do to you."

"It's like he said," Clara said with a nod to the General. "My death is an established historical event. It has to happen."

"Clara…" the Doctor said before going silent. This was not how he expected this to go.

"It's okay, Doctor. I'm ready for this," she told him as she pulled him in for a hug which he returned awkwardly.

The Doctor stared at her as she walked back out of the chamber and took her former position in the street, trying to see her one last time as the chamber door sealed itself.

"I think it's safe to say," the General began in a resigned tone, "that the coming of the hybrid has been averted."

"What are you talking about?" the Doctor asked angrily as he whipped around to glare at the General, before throwing the gun at his feet.

"It will unravel the web of time, and destroy a billion, billion hearts, to heal its own," the General repeated part of the prophecy.

The Doctor stared in shock at that, before his shock turned to horror at what he'd almost done to save someone important to him. It was Bowie Base One all over again.

 **.oOo.**

Clara walked back to the place she had been standing a few feet in front of the raven. If she were honest with herself, she was terrified. She wanted to stay with the Doctor and run away. But she wasn't lying when she said she felt like this was always meant to happen.

She looked at the raven with hatred and disgust as she resumed her position in front of it, feeling that anger form into a knot within herself. It was about to kill her, but that didn't mean she would let it take her without a fight, and she was prepared to give it one.

"Go on then," she said as she stared at it with loathing.

An instant later, she heard a thunderous crack as time started flowing again, followed immediately by a primal, animalistic cry of fury. It wasn't the caw of the raven, however. It was the snarl of a pissed off wolf.

Time seemed to slow again, though it didn't stop, and Clara's eyes went wide in shock as the spectral form of a wolf head erupted from her chest, made of gold, crimson, and deep purple energies swirling around each other. The spectral form opened its maw wide and seemed to _eat_ the raven whole. The raven exploded into a black, smoky looking energy before it disappeared, along with the form of the wolf, leaving behind a small concussive blast in its wake that caused Clara to fall to the ground, dead.

The Doctor stared at Clara's fallen form. He was distressed at the death of his friend, yet at the same time, trying to process what seemed so different about this compared to the old man they saw earlier. There certainly wasn't a clap of thunder with his demise, nor a flash of light.

Unfortunately, he didn't even have time to mourn his friend, as he heard a beep from the teleport bracelet around his arm. He walked back inside, his mind still trying to work out anything that might be possible to change what he just saw

 **.oOo.**

Rose picked herself up off the floor of the console room where she had fallen when the Void TARDIS seemed to slam into an impenetrable wall.

"What the hell was that?" Rose asked herself as she looked at the display closest to her, trying to make sense of the readouts. "How can there be a time lock around the street?"

She ran around the console, making adjustments and trying again, and again the TARDIS slammed into the time lock with another violent shudder.

"What the bloody hell have you done this time, Doctor?" she shouted. She knew that only the Time Lords and the Ancients would be able to create a localized time lock such as the one she was impacting, which must mean the Doctor was trying to do something insane.

"Sorry, Doctor. Not this time," she said with a near snarl to her voice. She closed her eyes and focused on the power that Bad Wolf had left her, calling on every last bit of it still within her, before opening her now glowing eyes and trying again.

This time, she felt a different sort of shudder through the TARDIS as it pushed against the time lock, before it finally shattered, and Rose fell to her knees, exhausted and panting for breath. Something was wrong. Even if the Doctor had managed to use his TARDIS to create a time lock somehow, it shouldn't have been nearly that strong.

After a moment to catch her breath, Rose shakily stood and started to work at the console again. If anyone had still been on the street, they would have seen a purple box made of some type of crystal fade in and out of existence around the girl lying dead in the middle of the cobblestones. As soon as it appeared solid, however, it began to disappear again, taking the dead girl with it.

When Rose looked away from the console, she saw Clara laying on the floor. It looked like she was too late. Clara was dead. But she knew what Bad Wolf had done, her memories no longer hidden within her mind, but there for her to examine as she wished.

She scooped up Clara's slightly smaller frame in her arms and carried her to the zero room she had left just a short time ago. She knew from her time working at Torchwood in Pete's world just how traumatic the first regeneration could be. The zero room would help though.

Rose had just made it inside the room when she collapsed, falling, but not hitting the floor, as the gravity disappeared causing them to float peacefully to the center of the room. Again, the room was bathed in a soft purple light, and Rose pulled Clara to her, holding her, as she lost consciousness herself.

 **.oOo.**

The Doctor still had a look of horror on his face when an alarm rang out within the extraction chamber causing all hell to break loose.

The General ran over to one of the control panels and fiddled with the instruments there, trying to understand what had happened. "That's not possible," he said.

"What is it?" the Doctor asked, wanting to be helpful, to do anything that would prevent him from falling into that pit that he called Time Lord Victorious.

"The time lock around Ms. Oswald's location has shattered. Time is flowing again."

"Well then, you got what you wanted," the Doctor spat.

"But… where is the quantum shade?" the General asked as he looked through the readouts on the display.

That got the Doctor's attention as he ran over to join the General. "That can't be," the Doctor said as he looked at the readings. "This suggests that the shade has been destroyed."

The General pressed a few more controls and brought up a holographic display of the street, showing it to be empty except for a brief flash of purple.

"There!" the Doctor exclaimed. "Play that back one frame at a time."

The General did so and stopped it on the only frame that had anything resembling a shape to it, causing them both to stare slack-jawed at the display. "Is that… is that your TARDIS, Lord President?"

"No," the Doctor replied. "My TARDIS is blue and says 'Police' on it. This is the same shape but different color and no writing. It looks almost like an after image. Wait a minute. Where is Clara?"

They scanned what they could of the visual feed. It was quite distorted from the shattering of the time lock. Amidst the fuzziness of the display, however, one thing was obvious. The blur that had been the body of Clara Oswald was there one instant and gone the next.

 **.oOo.**

Clara's eyes snapped open in surprise and she quickly flicked them around her immediate line of sight, a little confused at what she was seeing, until her memory caught up with her. "So, this is heaven, is it?" she asked as she took in the stark room bathed in purple light, in which she seemed to be _floating_.

"Mmmm, that's a nice thought," said a sleepy voice from behind her.

"Well, what else am I…" she started to say before her eyes went wide as her mind finally clicked into gear. She whirled around, only now registering the arms that were around her, and found herself face to face with the girl that had saved her life many times over.

"It's too early," Rose mumbled, "Go back to sleep."

"Rose?" Clara gasped. "How can you be here? The Doctor said you were trapped in a parallel world."

"Came back," Rose said groggily as she snuggled closer to her. "Had to find my Impossible Girl."

Clara blushed a little, realizing that Rose was obviously not fully awake yet. She gave into an impulse and leaned forward to gently kiss the tip of her nose, which in turn caused Rose to smile.

"It's time to wake up, Rose," Clara began. "Because I'm pretty sure, at the moment, you are the only person that can explain to me why I'm not _dead_."

That caused Rose to snap her eyes open and stare in shock at her. "Clara! It worked?! You're alive?"

"Well, I feel alive. But I have to admit, floating around in a purple nothingness certainly lends itself to thinking oneself dead upon first waking."

Rose smiled sheepishly at her, before releasing her from their embrace and concentrating on reasserting a light gravity, allowing them to turn and gently land on their feet. "Sorry about that."

"What is this place," Clara asked as Rose led her to a now open door.

"The zero room," Rose explained as they stepped out into the hallway.

"Are we on the TARDIS?" Clara asked in surprise.

" _A_ TARDIS," Rose clarified. "A very unique and special TARDIS," the background hum and lights flickered happily at that, "but a TARDIS none the less."

"How did I get here?" she asked.

"Bad Wolf," Rose supplied.

"But… I thought the Doctor took that power out of you?"

"He did," Rose confirmed. "I set about destroying the quantum shade while I still had that power, though, and the ability to reach through time. I still have a sliver of that power within me, to be honest. That's how I broke through the time lock around you."

"But, how am I still alive?" Clara asked.

"You don't remember yet?"

"Remember what?"

"Your time in the Doctor's time stream," Rose said quietly. "and the abstract space where you were put back together."

"That's all kind of fuzzy, to be honest," Clara told her.

"You regenerated," Rose told her bluntly, refusing to meet her eyes.

"Regenerated," Clara repeated softly. Her eyes glazed over as the memories of that time in the abstract space suddenly flooded her mind as clear as day and caused her to gasp as the magnitude of the changes in her really hit home.

"It was the only way to save you," Rose told her in a timid voice. "Both from the time stream and the quantum shade."

"I remember," Clara responded with a certain amount of awe in her voice. "I remember it all; the lifetimes saving the Doctor, the Great Intelligence, the time in the abstract where you put me back together and added a little something extra, the warmth and safety I felt there."

Rose risked a glance at Clara's face, and saw a look of surprise and wonder there, not the revulsion and hatred she had expected. "You… you don't hate me?"

Clara turned and looked deep into her eyes, sliding her hand up to gently caress Rose's cheek as she spoke sincerely. "You didn't hate me when I thought I'd become a monster of a Dalek. How could I hate you for giving me back my life?"

"I changed what you are," Rose said quietly. "I completely changed your physical being to be more like the Ancient ones."

Clara kept her hand on Rose's cheek, using the pad of her thumb to wipe away a stray tear as she continued. "And that's just like what you said about the Dalek. You changed _what_ I am, not _who_ I am."

Rose leaned into Clara's touch, closing her eyes and letting out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. She was so focused on finding and saving Clara, that she hadn't given much thought to how the Impossible Girl might react to becoming functionally immortal.

As Clara continued to stroke Rose's cheek, she realized she could somehow _feel_ the fear and anxiety radiating from her. Reaching out, she pulled Rose into a hug, holding on to the slightly taller girl fiercely. "It's okay, Rose. You did nothing wrong."

"But…" Rose began, just now realizing the significance of what she had done. "I altered you, I feel like I violated you, and your trust. How can you ever forgive me for that?"

"That's easy," Clara said with a genuine smile. "There's nothing to forgive. You told me what you did and I accepted that. I might have forgotten about it in all the chaos of the timeline synching stuff, but I remember it now."

Rose pulled back slightly, looking at Clara with a mix of hope and fear. Hope that this was real and fear that it was not. Clara smiled at her, leaned in, and kissed her on the cheek to show that she truly wasn't upset.

"So, what's next?" Clara asked as they resumed walking, this time side by side.

"Next, we get something to eat. I'm starving," Rose said with determination as they entered the console room. "Then we go shopping!"

Clara laughed at that, grateful that Rose no longer appeared to be so anxious and worried, as well as excited to be getting out and putting the stuff with the raven behind her.

 **.oOo.**

"Lord President," the General said as he walked into the office. "Romanadvoratrelundar is here as you requested."

The Doctor's face perked up as he watched his old friend walk into the room. "Romana!" he exclaimed as he walked over to greet her. "I must say, you're looking better than I had expected after the Time War."

"We survived, Doctor," she responded coolly. "I expect a stone would look better than you had expected."

"You wound me, Romana."

"You were going to use the _Moment_ to destroy the galaxy, Doctor."

"Ah, yes, but I didn't, did I?"

"And? Why didn't you?" she asked him bluntly.

"Bad Wolf," he told her.

Romana's eyes bulged at that, while the General looked confused. Romana was possibly the only other Time Lady remaining that knew of the prophecy involving the Bad Wolf. "How did you survive that?" she asked him in shock.

"I didn't," he told her. "I wasn't the one that absorbed the power. It was a human friend of mine from not too far into the future, actually."

Romana gaped at him and the General finally spoke up again. "Lord President, why is it you wished to see us?"

"I'm stepping down," the Doctor informed him point blank.

"But…" the General stared at him in shock. "You've exiled the High Council! There's none left ready for the position."

"There is," the Doctor countered. "And I think you kindly for bringing her here."

"You cannot be serious," Romana said to him.

"Romanadvoratrelundar, as my final act as the Lord President of the Time Lords of Gallifrey, I hereby name you as my successor and resign effective immediately."

"Why would you do such a thing?" she asked him, still trying to get over the shock.

"It's simple, really. Between the two of us, you've always been more equipped for such a position. I assume the General filled you in on the quantum shade on the way here?"

"He did," she replied.

"Excellent. If you would be so kind as to return me to my TARDIS, I have a mystery to solve," he said to her.

"You're serious, aren't you?" she asked him in shock.

"The last quantum shade has been destroyed and the body of a dear friend, the shade's last victim, has gone missing immediately after," he told her in a no-nonsense tone. "I am dead serious, you better believe it."

"Very well," she said to him, regaining her composure before turning to the General. "Prepare a temporal transmat, General. Return the Doctor to his TARDIS."

"As you say, Madam President," he responded before leaving the office.

"Thank you, Romana."

"No, Doctor," she responded sincerely. "You did save our world yet again. I hope you find the answers you are looking for. But remember, Doctor, you're not alone anymore. Try not to be a stranger," she told him with a faint smile.

He nodded to her and left, his mind working furiously on the details of everything that had happened since Trap Street while he walked to the transmat. He was still trying to sort things out in his mind as he stepped onto the platform and disappeared in a flash of light.

When he reappeared, the first thing he noticed was that he had not be transported directly into his TARDIS. The second thing he noticed was that he was on a London street in the middle of the night with streetlights aglow all around.

The Doctor turned around and saw his TARDIS standing there before him. In the glow of the streetlights, he could make out something very different, however. Sketched onto a panel of the door, was a picture of Clara. Snaking all over the TARDIS and particularly around the picture, were what appeared to be depictions of wild roses.

 **.oOo.**

Jack sat in his office cataloging the few items they took from the alien they had turned over to UNIT. He had resumed minimal operation of Torchwood since he wanted answers. That meant sticking around at least long enough for Rose to come back.

It had been several weeks since Rose left, and so he took to showing Jenny how things ran with Torchwood. Who knew, maybe she would even want to take it over someday. She was a sweet girl with the Doctor's innate sense of right and wrong, but without the traumatic past.

"Jack," Jenny said as she walked into his office. "Do you have any idea why an ugly brute like him would have had this beautiful necklace in his pocket?"

Jack looked up and he sucked in a breath at what he saw. "That was in his pocket?"

"Yeah," she responded. "Martha and Micky are doing some work with UNIT and said they found his in a hidden pocket of the alien's jacket. She was worried because she said she's seen something like it before but she couldn't remember where exactly."

"I'm surprised Mickey didn't recognize it immediately," Jack said as he gently took the necklace from her and put it into a secure safe in the wall of his office. "I wonder how the alien came to possess that."

"Well, what is it?" Jenny asked.

"It's a warp star," Jack informed her.

"What's a warp star?"

"It's an explosion waiting to happen," he stated bluntly.

"That's bad, I'm guessing?"

"Remember what I told you about the nuclear plant that someone wanted to use to blow up the rift?" he asked.

Jenny's eyes widened in shock as she remembered that story.

"Yeah, about that size," he stated.

"Well, we should get that as far from the rift as possible then," she said with urgency.

"It will be ok where it is for now," he told her. "It requires some special input to trigger."

"I still don't like…" she started to say, before being interrupted by the most wonderful sound either of them had ever heard.

Jack and Jenny looked at each other for a moment, before they both ran out of his office and down into the main Hub where a crystalline TARDIS was appearing. When it finally appeared solid, they both rushed inside without bothering to knock.

"Where have you been?" Jack as without preamble when he saw Rose walking away from the console and towards where he just came in the door.

"And if this is a time machine, what took you so long?" Jenny added.

"She was rescuing me," Clara said as she stepped around from the other side of the console where she had been out of view.

"Jack, Jenny, I'd like you to meet Clara, a companion of the Doctor," Rose said as way of introduction.

"And a companion of one Rose Tyler, thank you very much," Clara added with a smirk.

Rose smiled sheepishly, having not wanted to presume but secretly happy at Clara's remark. "Well, since you're both here, how about a little trip?"

"Where to?" Jack asked.

"Shopping," Rose answered.

Jack raised an eyebrow at that. "You've got a TARDIS. You can go anywhere in time and space but you picked us up to go _shopping_?"

"Well, when you put it like that, it sounds kind of silly," Rose said.

"Rose thought you both might want to get out of here for a while," Clara spoke up.

"And there are some things that we want to acquire that you might be best to help us with," Rose continued.

"Like what?" he asked in confusion.

"Well, among other things, we could use some psychic paper," Rose informed him.

Jack looked a little surprised at that. "That doesn't come easy, you know. Or cheap for that matter. Even for the Time Agency."

"Well, we have this for trade," Rose said as she reached into her pocket and pulled out a small crystal that easily fit in the palm of her hand.

"Whoa," Jack said in surprise. "That's quite a diamond."

"It's not a diamond," she informed him. "It's azbantium."

Jack let out a long, low whistle at that bit of information, before a cheeky smile stretched itself across his face. "I think I know just the place."

 **.oOo.**

 **A/N:** Sorry for any grammar/spelling issues. There are only so many times I can reread my own work and I don't know anyone else that has the same level of interest in this area that's able to beta for me. Sorry again for the inconsistent uploads. I'm doing something I never wanted to do and that's uploading a story as it's written rather than waiting until it's complete. Life has not been particularly kind lately so I'm doing what I can when I can. Thanks for everyone that's followed/favorited.


	4. Chapter 4: Revelations

**Disclaimer:** See chapter 1 for disclaimer.

 ** _Chapter 4: Revelations_**

"Thank you, seriously, thank you," Dorium said as he stretched out his recently healed body and cracked his neck that held his freshly reattached head. "Even with the media chip in my head, I didn't feel whole," he said, chuckling at his own bad joke.

Clara looked at him oddly as Rose responded to him. "You helped the Doctor, even if it was to pay a debt to him. It was the least we could do."

"Yes," Dorium nodded, quite thankful to be _able_ to nod. "Well, such deeds don't come without a price, so what is it?"

"That was a thank you gift," Jack said to him as they sat down in the currently closed Maldovarium. "And, you might say, enticement."

"Enticement for what?" he asked as he looked at Jack suspiciously, having dealt with him a few times in the past.

"We want to trade," Jack informed him as he pulled out a list and handed it over.

Dorium looked through the list, his eyebrows rising higher and higher with each item that the list contained. "This is quite the inventory you're looking for. The precious metals and gems alone would cost several million credits each and the technical schematics might be all but impossible to find."

"Which is why we came to you," Jack said with a cheeky grin.

"My dear Captain," Dorium said in a patronizing tone. "I know you can't have anything to trade that would be worth all of this."

In response, Jack pulled the crystal from his pocket and held it out for Dorium to inspect.

"If you already have diamonds," Dorium began with barely a glance at the gem, "why is that an item on your list?"

"Because that's not a diamond," Rose said with a smug grin as she nodded at the crystal in Jack's outstretched palm.

"That what, pray tell, is it?" he asked, trying not to show his nervousness at the smug smile on the blonde girl's face.

"Azbantium," Jack said simply.

Dorium's composure crumbled as his eyes became huge and his mouth fell open on hearing what a rare and precious stone he was now staring at.

"This is just the sample for you to test," Jack told him.

"There is more where that came from, too," Rose said, still looking quite smug.

"When do you need it?" Dorium asked gesturing to the list.

"Time machine," Jack said referring to the TARDIS, where they had fixed him up a short time ago. "You tell us when you can have it ready by, and we will jump forward."

"I'll need to test this first, you understand?"

"That's why we brought it," Jack said, with a smug smile of his own.

 **.oOo.**

"He really came through," Jenny said with a bit of surprise as they were unpacking crates in a storage room on the TARDIS.

"I've known Dorium for a long time," Jack said with a reminiscent look on his face. "He can be shady, but usually for the right reasons."

"Usually?" Clara asked with a slight smirk.

"Well, everyone gives into selfishness sometimes," Jack said, not noticing the guilty look that crossed Rose's face as she looked away. "But, to be fair, some amount of selfishness is required to keep a healthy mind and body."

"How do you mean?" Jenny asked.

"Here's the psychic paper," Jack said as he slid a box towards the door. "What I mean," he continued as he finished looking through that crate and moved on to another, "is that if you spend all your time only helping others, doing for others, not giving any thought to yourself, eventually you wear down. Some people get so focused on helping others sometimes, that they ignore their own health and get sick."

"And sometimes," Clara said with a thoughtful look on her face, "they stop thinking clearly and become reckless and dangerous."

"That can happen too," Jack confirmed with a nod.

"You were just thinking about the Doctor, weren't you?" Rose asked Clara.

"Yeah," she replied. "I've seen him go too far, in both directions, honestly. I suppose it just goes to show that we all struggle with finding that balance, regardless of age."

"Ah Ha!" Jack shouted with glee. "I found it," he said as he pulled a large box from a crate. "What is it that we need this kind of wiring for though?" he asked. "Seems a bit overkill."

"Yeah," Jenny agreed. "The one with the food processor seems to be more than enough as it is."

"That one stays with the food processor," Rose told them. "Once the TARDIS has finished scanning that equipment, she will be able to adapt the technology and create her own version of it in our kitchen. After that's done, all that equipment goes with the both of you to Torchwood."

"Then what's this cabling for?" Jack asked.

"This one," she said with hope in her voice, "is going to save a lot of lives."

 **.oOo.**

Jack had just finished securing the connection of the massive wire to a central computer core access port under the main console when Clara came to get him.

"All done," Jack told her as he climbed up the stairs to the main level.

"Great," Clara told him. "Come on, Rose is done too. We're ready to test it."

"So, what's the point of this setup," he asked Clara as they walked towards the kitchen.

"Self-sufficiency," she told him. "It's better to have it and not _need_ it, than to need it and not have it."

"Fair enough," he agreed. "I still don't understand it, though. I'm not sure I could trust anything that makes food out of nothing."

"It's not out of nothing, Jack. It's just like a transmat."

"How so?" he asked her a bit skeptically.

"Well, how does a transmat work?" she countered.

"It scans your body or the object to be transported, breaks it down into patterns of energy, and then transmits that energy through subspace to the target and puts it back together."

"That's what this does," she told him, "but with a few less steps. That's why we spent all that time getting recipes and ingredients and such to scan into the new device. It will store those patterns, and when you want it, you call it up on the screen, and the system converts energy into the pattern you requested."

"Not only that," Rose said as they walked into the kitchen, having caught the end of their conversation, "but it's a zero-waste system too. Anything that is not needed can be broken down into energy and turned into something else. It's the ultimate recycling plan."

"Well," Jack said, still a little skeptical, "let's see it in action then."

"Thank you for volunteering, Jack," she said with a smirk. "What would you like?"

He gulped a little at that, but decided to brace himself and select something he's had made badly many times before, so he should be used to it. "Coffee, black, two sugars."

Rose pressed a few controls on the device that had replaced one of the cupboards above the counter and they all stared as a mug of hot coffee appeared, disappeared, and reappeared again in the same way the TARDIS does, before it finally appeared fully. She stepped aside for Jack to approach the counter and take the mug of coffee.

Everyone watched as Jack stepped forward, took the mug by the handle, and gently tipped it to his lips. When his eyes seemed to bug out of his head, Rose thought something went horribly wrong. Her fears were cast aside, however, when he pulled the mug away from his mouth.

"Holy crap!"

"What's wrong with it?" Rose asked him.

"It's perfect!" He told her. "I remember you trying to make coffee with a regular coffee pot," he continued with a teasing smirk. "I was expecting something more like sludge, but this is the best damn coffee I've ever had."

Rose smiled as she turned back to the controls and produced four baskets of fish and chips and an assortment of drinks before they all sat down at the table.

"And the equipment that this is based on will be coming back to Torchwood?" Jenny asked just before she savored a forkful of fish.

"Yep," Rose said, popping the p like her Doctor used to do.

"Something like this must require a massive amount of power, though," Jack said. "More than the piddly little nuclear plant near Cardiff can produce."

"That's the reason for the wiring that came with it," Rose told him. "It will hook up to your rift manipulator and draw power directly from the rift."

"I would never have thought of that," he admitted.

"I'm still not putting my mum's soufflé recipe in that," Clara said with a little laugh. "If you would like, I'll get the ingredients from it then make it by hand."

"That sounds lovely," Rose said with a bright smile.

 **.oOo.**

River had just knocked out the Doctor and cuffed him to a support beam. A small part of her resented that his future self knew this was going to happen and never told her, but she also knew that he had to maintain the timelines.

She had just started to work on rigging up a device that would let her hook herself into the computer to give it the extra memory space it would need, when she heard that most wonderful sound that filled her with so much hope.

Stepping around the corner to find the source of the sound, she was surprised to not see a wooden blue police box, but rather a purple box that appeared to be made out of some sort of crystal material. She was even more surprised when the doors opened and out stepped a girl with long blonde hair.

"Bad Wolf?" River asked in a quiet voice.

"Not anymore," Rose said. "Well, not really, though I do still have a small part of the power within me."

"Rose?" River said with even more shock. "But… how?"

"That's a long story," Clara said as she stepped out with a large cable in her hand.

"Clara? The Doctor said you died," River was staring at the two girls with a look of surprise and a little bit of fear. She wasn't used to being the surprised one, and it should be impossible for either of them to be in The Library, let alone together, or with a TARDIS that wasn't the Doctor's.

"Like Clara said," Rose began as she took the cable from Clara and handed connection end to River, "it's a long story. We'll gladly tell you once you're on the TARDIS, but for now, we need to get this hooked up to the computer system."

"What are you planning?" River asked, slipping into professional mode knowing that answers would have to wait for now.

"You're not going to hook yourself up, you're going to hook the TARDIS up," Rose said.

"But that would fry a TARDIS, possibly causing it to explode," River said, not moving yet until she had some assurance. "We can't let that happen again."

Rose raised an eyebrow at that, wondering what she had missed when looking through time, but decided to file it away for later. "Not this one," she said.

Apparently, that was all the assurance River needed as she began to work immediately on hooking up the connection to the computer. "What about the timeline? He wouldn't have kept this a secret if he thought I survived."

"You're going to go through with your plan, just with different connections. As you connect the last cable, we're going to teleport you out, so it will look like you were vaporized."

"That's such a lovely thought," River said sarcastically. "Thank you for that, Clara."

"You asked," Clara responded as she walked back into the TARDIS to monitor the readings on the display. Thankfully, in the time they had been getting to know each other while planning this after dropping Jack and Jenny of at Torchwood, Rose had been able to set the default language on the displays to English. It would be some time before she felt comfortable reading Gallifreyan or even Ancient.

"I'm going to be monitoring you closely," Rose said quietly to River as she sat in the terminal control chair to finish the last of the connections. "The moment you make that final connection, we're pulling you out."

"You're sure this is going to work?" River asked. "I don't want to risk all these people, or the Doctor, on a chance."

"I've already seen it work," Rose responded as she walked away and stepped into the Void TARDIS. She monitored the readings at the teleport controls very carefully just as she said she would. She also peeked at the monitor displaying the outside to them. She watched as her Doctor pleaded with River. Rose just wanted to run out there and give him a hug and tell him it would all be ok, but she knew she couldn't. This was even before the Reality Bomb.

Rose was surprised when she felt a pair of slender arms encircle her from behind. As Clara rested her chin on Rose's shoulder, she squeezed the blonde girl gently. "It's going to be okay," she told Rose.

"I know," was Rose's reply. "It just hurts," she admitted after a moment of silence. "He's right outside those doors, the Doctor that I traveled with for so long. I just want to hold him and tell him it will all work out."

Rather than saying anything more, Clara just held Rose, trying to project feelings of comfort and safety to her, and Rose was thankful for that. Rose steeled herself as the countdown approached zero. As it did, and River connected the last line, Rose teleported her in a brilliant flash of white light.

When the bright white light of the teleport faded, River was standing there next to the center console looking shocked. "Did it work?" she asked.

Just then, sparks flew out of the floor and all the consoles and the lights went dark within the console room, except for the faint purple glow from the Time Rotor.

"What the hell just happened," Clara asked in surprise after a moment.

"I'm checking," Rose said as she worked furiously at another console. A moment later, the console room hummed to life, the lights slowly coming back on. "It worked," Rose said. "It knocked her out for a moment, but it worked."

"What could have possibly happened to knock out a TARDIS?" Clara asked urgently.

"We're in the biggest library in the universe," Rose said, a sudden smile playing across her face. "We just got a copy of it, _all_ of it."

 **.oOo.**

The Doctor was staring out beyond the balcony, listening to the mournful tune of the singing towers, as if they were singing a lament just for him. The sun was just starting to rise, but he felt a darkness descending on his hearts. He had just sent River off, knowing she was going to The Library. He still hadn't thought of anything he could do to get her out of the massive computer, however.

His depression was interrupted by a wheezing, groaning sound slowly building from out on the balcony itself. He turned quickly and saw his TARDIS still at the back of the room, before turning again and walking just as quickly to the balcony to see what was happening.

Materializing before him was the familiar shape of a box, but without any writing, and purple instead of blue. What was most striking in difference, however, was that it appeared to be made out of some form of crystal instead of wood. When the door opened and River stepped out, he thought he was hallucinating.

"Hello, Sweetie," she said to him with a bright smile on her face.

"River? But… how?" he asked in disbelief. "And where did you get a TARDIS?"

"She didn't," came the voice of a friend he thought had died before his very eyes. Clara stepped out from the TARDIS and ran over to hug the Doctor. "Hello, Doctor. It's good to see you again."

"Clara…" he said with a soft gasp. "I've finally cracked, haven't I? You can't be here! I saw you die! And your body vanished!"

"That," Rose began as she stepped out behind Clara, "would be my fault. Hello, Doctor."

The Doctor staggered over to a chair and sat heavily on it. He didn't know if he had really cracked or if he had been somehow thrown into hell to be tormented by the images of those he had lost.

River walked over to him and sat down on his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck and planting a big wet kiss directly on his lips. "No, you're not cracking up," she said after she ended the kiss. "We are really here. These two lovely ladies here saved me in The Library."

"But, how?" was all he could manage at the moment.

"We hooked this beauty," Rose said as she patted the side of the crystalline TARDIS affectionately, "into the computer in place of River. But you, more than most, Doctor, know how timelines must be maintained."

"It wasn't an afterimage!" the Doctor exclaimed as his eyes widened in surprise.

The three women looked at each other in confusion before turning as one to look at the Doctor for an explanation.

"In the extraction chamber," he said with a nod to Clara. "Alarms went off about the time lock shattering prematurely. I assume that you had something to do with that," he said with a nod to Rose, which she returned. "We discovered that the quantum shade had been destroyed and were scanning the visual feed for any idea of what might have happened to it but the image was severely distorted from the shattering of the time lock. We saw only a vaguely box-like shape of purple and suddenly Clara's body was gone."

"That was us," Rose said as she pointed from herself to the Void TARDIS.

"But how did you survive?" he asked Clara.

"Technically… I didn't," she responded.

The Doctor reached out suddenly and grabbed her wrist, pressing two fingers to it. "You have a pulse again, so you're not time-looped anymore."

Clara looked to Rose, who couldn't resist playing with the Doctor just a little. "She was killed," Rose told him. "But it didn't stick," she finished with a little snicker that caused Clara to smack her on the shoulder.

"I regenerated," Clara said to the Doctor.

"How?"

"Bad Wolf," Rose answered him seriously. "Bad Wolf could see all that was or ever could be, and she found several things that she deemed needed to be changed."

"But… you couldn't control it," he said in confusion. "And Jack…"

Rose looked disappointed in herself as she replied. "Jack was the first," she admitted. "I didn't understand what I was doing, but I learned from that and did a better job with the others."

"What do you mean, others?" the Doctor asked, worried about what she might have done.

"Clara and I are not entirely human anymore," Rose said somberly. "We have been augmented to be more like the Ancient ones,"

The Doctor's eyes again bulged at that admission, only having a vague idea of what she meant, but enough of an idea to know the magnitude of such a change.

"Yourself, River, Jenny, and another have no limit to your regenerations," Rose continued, not looking the Doctor in the eyes.

"Jenny's alive!?" he asked in shock.

Rose nodded. "You know how difficult a first regeneration is. It took her a while to regenerate, by which time you were gone and she took off in a shuttlecraft."

"We have to go find her!" he exclaimed as he tried to get up, but River stayed on his lap and prevented him from doing so.

"Bad Wolf already did," Rose told him. "She's on Earth, with Jack at Torchwood."

"You left her with Jack?" the Doctor asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Hey," Rose defended. "He's like a brother to me, remember? Besides, someone had to explain regeneration and such to her so she knows why you have a different face."

"Fair enough," he responded after a moment. "But, who is the other you mentioned?"

Rose looked away again, but they could all see the mix of sadness and excitement on her face anyway. "I can't tell you that, yet."

"Why not?"

"Timelines, Doctor, must be maintained. Or as your wife would say," she said as she nodded in River's direction, "spoilers." With that said, Rose turned and walked back towards the Void TARDIS, opening the door and looking to see if Clara would be joining here or staying with the Doctor, partly dreading the latter.

"What a minute, where are you going?" he asked.

"You have some catching up to do, Doctor," Rose said, still standing in the doorway of the TARDIS. "Go to Cardiff, fuel up the TARDIS, you won't be disappointed in what else you find there."

Clara kissed him on the cheek and then walked over to join Rose in the doorway, before looking back to the Doctor and River, smiling at them.

"But," the Doctor began grasping for information he still didn't have. "Where did you get a TARDIS? I'm pretty sure you've never been to Gallifrey."

"You've seen her before," Rose said as she looked back to the Doctor. "But the last time you saw her, she looked like a big metal sphere that punched a hole between dimensions."

"The Void Ship is a TARDIS? Do you have any idea how dangerous that could be?"

"I do, and so did Bad Wolf. That is why she repaired her, enhanced her, and planted the seed of a proper personality, based on your own TARDIS actually."

The Doctor looked a little dumbstruck at being so easily countered and tried one last ditch effort. "Can I see?"

"Next time," Rose told him with a smile. "We're not quite ready for you to try to take her away from us yet." With that said, Rose and Clara disappeared into the TARDIS and took off, leaving a bewildered Doctor and River behind.

 **.oOo.**

"So, what exactly do these do?" Clara asked Rose a few months later. On the table in front of her were what looked like a watch and a choker-style necklace, but given how long it had taken Rose to create them with the help of the TARDIS, she suspected them to be much more.

"The necklace," Rose started, "is similar to the food processor, but rather limited. It has a computer core that takes energy, either from the space around us or directly from the void, and creates nanites that it stores in a pocket dimension. From there it can beam those nanites out to form whatever clothing we want it to, but with the strength of armor."

"You mean," Clara began with a note of awe in her voice, "no need for a huge wardrobe? No need to go clothes shopping again? No need to worry about being dressed inappropriately for wherever we land?"

"Exactly," Rose confirmed. "And the watch is more for convenience than anything else, really. It's like a computer but can interface with your mind like the necklace or the sonic can. It can also project a holographic display into the environment around you should you need to for whatever reason. It does have two rather important functions, though."

"Oh? And what's that?" Clara asked.

"It can also function like a vortex manipulator," Rose deadpanned.

Clara's eyes went wide at hearing that. "So, even if the Doctor does manage to take the TARDIS, we still have all of time and space?"

"Yep," Rose said, popping the p like the Doctor used to. "And both of these can communicate together and with the sonics, and the watches can also serve as coms across time and space if we get separated for whatever reason."

"No wonder it took you so long to make these," Clara said, again with a look of wonder on her face.

"Oh, it's the emergency features that took the longest," Rose informed her. "Considering how much space travel we do, if something happened and we accidentally wind up floating in space, the watch and necklace working together will create a bubble around you and continuously recycle the air in it."

"So, never take them off then?"

"Right. They are completely waterproof and airtight, as well as encased in a micro shield of azbantium, so you don't have to worry about them getting damaged in the shower or just about anything else."

"Jeez, Rose. Did you get any sleep in the past few months? I thought you were spending the majority of the time teaching me the TARDIS systems and languages and our new abilities?"

"I admit, I did cheat from time to time, using the zero room to sleep in, but not all that often. I wanted to get these finished so we would have that much less to worry about."

"Well, it's done now, so maybe you should get some real sleep now," Clara admonished.

Rose mock saluted, before closing her eyes for a moment to focus. As she did, her necklace and clothes glowed with a faint rainbow-colored aura, before morphing into the form of comfortable pajamas.

Clara grinned at seeing the first real demonstration of what this amazing new tech could do. The possibilities could be endless. She leaned over and kissed Rose on the cheek, before standing and stretching, suppressing a yawn as she did so.

"I think sleep is definitely the next order of business," she said as she padded out of the kitchen with a smile at Rose before she disappeared.

Rose stayed in the kitchen, sipping her rapidly cooling tea as she watched Clara walk from the room and disappear down the hall. They had grown even closer in their few months of isolation, but there still seemed to be something missing, like a single piece of a jigsaw puzzle. There was still a dull ache deep within Rose that never completely went away. Hoping that it just meant she was a bit overworked, she decided to do as she promised and get some sleep. Perhaps tomorrow they could take a vacation just to relax.

 **.oOo.**

Rose stared at the display after the TARDIS had landed. It looked absolutely perfect and she hoped Clara would agree. Hearing footsteps approaching, she quickly turned off the monitor and turned around to see Clara walk into the console room with a grin on her face.

"Where are we?" she asked Rose.

"How about you take that bag," Rose said as she nodded at the large bag sitting on the chair near Clara, "and we go take a look."

Clara picked up the bag without even looking inside of it and ran to the doors, opening them and stepping out into the sunlight. The first thing she noticed after the bright sun, was the very sandy and very empty beach that stretched out as far as she could see. When she heard Rose step out behind her, she turned to speak but stopped short.

Standing in front of her was Rose, but her Tee-shirt and blue jeans had been replaced by a modest light-blue bikini with matching sarong. Clara couldn't help but admire how beautiful Rose looked in that moment, before she noticed that she held a picnic basket in one hand and a large beach umbrella in the other. She finally noticed the bright smile on Rose's face and returned it with one of her own.

"The entire planet is deserted," Rose said as she tried to ignore the thrill she got from Clara's initial reaction. "While there are some dangerous land animals, there's nothing dangerous in the sea or within a hundred miles or so from the shore."

Clara grinned at her, before closing her eyes and focusing on her necklace. A moment later, her ensemble was replaced to match Rose, except her bikini was dark pink with a bright yellow sarong. "Absolutely beautiful," Clara said softly, implying the location but not really taking her eyes off Rose until they started walking.

"We've been in the vortex for quite a while," Rose said as they walked a little way down the beach. "I thought we could use a break to just relax and enjoy ourselves."

"I think it's a great idea," Clara replied as she set the bag down and pulled out two large beach towels for them to lay on. As Rose was about to set up the beach umbrella, Clara stopped her. "Do you think we could wait a little while before putting that up?"

Rose looked at her and smiled brightly. "There's some tanning oil in the bag as well."

Clara grinned and reached into the bag, pulling the oil out. She gave a thought to her necklace, causing her sarong to vanish, and plopped herself down on one of the towels to begin applying the tanning oil to her skin.

Rose watched Clara out of the corner of her eye, while applying oil to herself as well, and was pleased to see Clara so relaxed. The past few months of doing almost nothing but learning and reading really had started to wear on them both, so this was a very welcomed break. They took turns applying oil to the other's back, before laying down on the towels with closed eyes, just enjoying the warmth of the sun.

Almost two hours later, after several turns to ensure an even tan, Rose got to her feet and stretched languidly, feeling rested and energized. Looking over at Clara, who was in turn looking back at Rose with a raised eyebrow, Rose smirked and ran to the water's edge, jumping in without a care in the world.

Clara sat up, stretching as well, and watched Rose for a few minutes. She was glad they were taking a break. Rose had put in so much effort teaching her about everything she had learned as Bad Wolf as well as all about their new abilities that came with being part Ancient. As she watched Rose play in the light surf, she decided to put all thoughts of their training aside for the day and just enjoy the time to relax. With that in mind, Clara stood, stretched again, and ran to join Rose in the water.

Just over an hour later, after much laughing and splashing, they returned to their spot on the beach, with Clara putting up the over-sized beach umbrella as Rose pulled some cold turkey sandwiches and bottles of water from the picnic basket. They ate in silence, and Clara couldn't help but think it was a peaceful, comfortable silence. There was no pressing need to be somewhere else, no aliens invading, no Daleks trying to exterminate everyone; just the two of them, enjoying life. Rose was thinking quite along the same lines and let out a relieved sigh as she contemplated how things were going.

"Something on your mind? Clara asked after she heard Rose sigh.

"Not really," Rose replied. "Just thinking how nice this is, not worrying about life and death or hostile takeovers or such."

"Yeah," Clara agreed. "Today has been absolutely perfect."

"I'm glad you think so," Rose said with a secretive smirk.

"Uh oh," Clara said with a giggle. "What have you got hidden up your sleeve?"

"I don't have any sleeves to have something hidden in," was Rose's cheeky reply.

Clara, however, was acutely aware of that fact and tried not to let it show on her face just how much she liked what she saw. "So?"

"What?" Rose asked innocently.

"You know what," Clara said with another happy chuckle. "Are you going to tell me?"

"Nope," Rose told her. "I wouldn't want to ruin the surprise."

 **.oOo.**

Rose and Clara were both enjoying their night out with a few cocktails and dancing together to the loud music of the club. Rose determined that it wasn't _quite_ as nice as their time on the beach, but it was still a lot of fun. Clara was in front of Rose, twirling and moving with the music, in a short and strapless little black dress that was very similar to Rose's own dark purple dress. As Rose finished her drink and set the empty glass on the bar, she walked the few steps to Clara.

Placing her arms around Clara's waist from behind, they started moving together almost instantly, as if they had both been waiting for this exact moment. While they each drew looks from others in the club, something about the way they moved together prevented anyone from trying to cut in wither either of them.

Clara slowly twirled around in Rose's grasp before they were face to face and she couldn't help but smile at the look of bliss on her friend's face. They had both been through a lot of difficult times in their travels, but the fact that they could still enjoy life as they were made it all worthwhile.

When Clara realized her stare was locked on Rose's full, red lips that were forming her brilliant smile, she tore her gaze away and looked into those honey colored eyes that held so much warmth. Right now, however, there was more than just warmth in those beautiful brown eyes that were looking back at her. There was a fire flickering behind her eyes, a look that Clara realized was desire.

Her breathing hitched in that moment. All of their time spent together from the moment they met in the Doctor's time stream, to just now when they locked eyes on each other, suddenly ran through Clara's mind. When she realized how effortlessly they fit together on the dance floor, and how close they had become over all the time they knew each other, her mind started up again, and she panicked.

Rose saw a look of fear pass across Clara's face and grew concerned. When she saw Clara drop two inches, she realized her friend's shoes had probably vanished.

"Clara?" Rose asked, growing more concerned with each second that passed.

But Clara didn't hear her. She was in full panic as her mind raced with thoughts of how wonderful her life had become, and how much she had to lose. With all rational thoughts leaving her for the moment, Clara did the only thing she could, she ran.

Rose looked on, stunned, as Clara ran from the club. They'd just had such a wonderful day together. What could possibly cause her friend to run in fear as she had from the club? Hardly a word had been said in the club itself aside from them ordering their drinks, the volume of the music didn't make conversation much of a possibility.

She looked around briefly to see if there was something that might have caused Clara to panic as she had, but didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Then she remembered that she had been looking right into her eyes at the time. Something in Rose's eyes caused her to panic.

Losing a couple inches herself as she thought about losing her shoes to go after her, Rose quickly left the club as well in search of Clara. Something was wrong and she was determined to find out what. When she got outside, however, there was no sign of Clara anywhere. Walking down the street to an empty alley, Rose used her watch to teleport directly to Clara's location.

Rose ended up in another alley, and what she saw before her made her furious. A strange man had Clara pinned against the outer wall of one of the buildings. He was using one hand to hold both of her wrists together above her head while his other hand was on her bare leg sliding up towards the hem of her dress. Clara was obviously struggling against this attention and that was enough to cause Rose to snap.

Rose's eye glowed a brilliant shade of gold as she stepped over and spun the man around only to grab him by the throat and lift him off the ground. "Just what the hell do you think you're doing?" she asked in her now dual-toned voice, which had an obviously angry lilt to it.

The man, however, was not all that clever. "What? She was upset, I was just trying to make her feel better."

"Wrong answer," Rose growled out as she physically flung the man half the length of the alley, causing him to land hard against a dumpster, knocking him out.

The next thing she knew, Rose found her arms full of a crying and shaking brunette. With the glow now fading from her eyes, Rose pulled Clara into her side and led them both out of the alley and towards the TARDIS.

It wasn't until they were both inside that Rose finally was able to speak again. "Clara? What happened? Why did you run out of the club?"

Clara had stopped crying but was still visibly upset as she tried to respond. "I'm sorry, Rose. I don't know what got into me. It all happened so fast, so many memories just flashed through my mind in a rush and I panicked."

"Clara," Rose began. "You were looking into my eyes at the time. What did you see?"

Clara took a deep breath as she tried to compose herself. She was still afraid, especially about talking about this, but she didn't see any way to avoid it now. "I saw you were feeling something, very intense, and I wondered what you might be thinking about to cause such an intense look in your eyes."

"You saw our time together, didn't you?" Rose asked.

Clara looked shocked at that. "How did you know?"

"Because that's what I was thinking about," Rose answered simply. "I told you during our training that eventually your telepathic abilities would unlock."

"Thinking about… our time together… is what caused _that_ look in your eyes?"

"I don't know exactly what look you saw," Rose told her, "but that's what I was thinking about at the time."

Clara looked deep into Rose's eyes again. She could still see that desire there, but now it was mixed with a little of the fear she herself was feeling. She could also see compassion and worry in her eyes. Suddenly, Clara felt it all, the desire, the passion, the compassion, the fear and worry, all of it swirling around her like a raging storm.

Her own fear started to grip at her heart again, fear of what would happen if she gave into her own feelings, of what might happen if she took that step that she wanted desperately, but couldn't predict. She knew exactly what she was afraid of, however. She was afraid of giving into what her heart wanted and then having it all ripped away again.

This time, thankfully, rational thought did not flee her mind, and she thought about the feelings and memories she saw from Rose meant. Rose obvious had similarly strong feelings, why else would those memories cause such strong emotions. When Rose's breathing hitched, having obviously seen something in her own eyes, Clara felt as if something clicked into place inside of her.

With an unexpected feeling that the universe was suddenly whole again, Clara did what she'd wanted to do for a long time. Placing her hands on either side of Rose's face, Clara leaned up and kissed Rose.

 **.oOo.**


End file.
